"And these gentlemen—these here friends of yours—your 'set,' as you call 'em—what are they aiming for?"
Arthur did not answer. It would be hopeless to try to make Hiram Ranger understand, still less tolerate, an ideal of life that was elegant leisure, the patronage of literature and art, music, the drama, the turf, and the pursuit of culture and polite extravagance, wholly aloof from the frenzied and vulgar jostling of the market place.
With a mighty heave of the shoulders which, if it had found outward relief, would have been a sigh, Hiram Ranger advanced to the hard part of the first task which the mandate, "Put your house in order," had set for him. He took from the inside pocket of his coat a small bundle of papers, the records of Arthur's college expenses. The idea of accounts with his children had been abhorrent to him. The absolute necessity of business method had forced him to make some records, and these he had expected to destroy without anyone but himself knowing of their existence. But in the new circumstances he felt he must not let his own false shame push the young man still farther from the right course. Arthur watched him open each paper in the bundle slowly, spread it out and, to put off the hateful moment for speech, pretend to peruse it deliberately before laying it on his knee; and, dim though the boy's conception of his father was, he did not misjudge the feelings behind that painful reluctance. Hiram held the last paper in a hand that trembled. He coughed, made several attempts to speak, finally began: "Your first year at Harvard, you spent seventeen hundred dollars. Your second year, you spent fifty-three hundred. Last year—Are all your bills in?"
"There are a few—" murmured Arthur.
"How much?"
He flushed hotly.
"Don't you know?" With this question his father lifted his eyes without lifting his shaggy eyebrows.
"About four or five thousand—in all—including the tailors and other tradespeople."
A pink spot appeared in the left cheek of the old man—very bright against the gray-white of his skin. Somehow, he did not like that word "tradespeople," though it seemed harmless enough. "This last year, the total was," said he, still monotonously, "ninety-eight hundred odd—if the bills I haven't got yet ain't more than five thousand."
"A dozen men spend several times that much," protested Arthur.