"But this business isn't run from the office," replied Hiram, with a gentle smile that to the young man looked like the sneer of a tyrant. "It's run from the mill. It prospers—it always has prospered—because I work with the men. I know what they ought to do and what they are doing. We all work together here. There ain't a Sunday clothes job about the place."
Arthur's fingers were trembling as he pulled at his small mustache. What did this tyrant expect of him? He had assumed that a place was to be made for him in the office, a dignified place. There he would master the business, would gather such knowledge as might be necessary successfully to direct it, and would bestow that knowledge in the humble, out-of-the-way corner of his mind befitting matters of that kind. And here was his father, believing that the same coarse and toilsome methods which had been necessary for himself were necessary for a trained and cultured understanding!
"What do you want me to do?" asked Arthur.
Hiram drew a breath of relief. The boy was going to show good sense and willingness after all. "I guess you'd better learn barrel-making first," said he. He rose. "I'll take you to the foreman of the cooperage, and to-morrow you can go to work in the stave department. The first thing is to learn to make a first-class barrel."
Arthur slowly rose to follow. He was weak with helpless rage. If his father had taken him into the office and had invited him to help in directing the intellectual part of that great enterprise, the part that in a way was not without appeal to the imagination, he felt that he might gradually have accustomed himself to it; but to be put into the mindless routine of the workingman, to be set about menial tasks which a mere muscular machine could perform better than he—what waste, what degradation, what insult!
He followed his father to the cooperage, the uproar of its machinery jarring fiercely upon him, but not so fiercely as did the common-looking men slaving in torn and patched and stained clothing. He did not look at the foreman as his father was introducing them and ignored his proffered hand. "Begin him at the bottom, Patrick," explained Hiram, "and show him no favors. We must give him a good education."
"That's right, Mr. Ranger," said Patrick, eying his new pupil dubiously. He was not skilled in analysis of manner and character, so Arthur's superciliousness missed him entirely and he was attributing the cold and vacant stare to stupidity. "A regular damn dude," he was saying to himself. "As soon as the old man's gone, some fellow with brains'll do him out of the business. If the old man's wise, he'll buy him an annuity, something safe and sure. Why do so many rich people have sons like that? If I had one of his breed I'd shake his brains up with a stave."
Arthur mechanically followed his father back to the office. At the door Hiram, eager to be rid of him, said: "I reckon that's about all we can do to-day. You'd better go to Black and Peters's and get you some clothes. Then you can show up at the cooperage at seven to-morrow morning, ready to put in a good day's work."
He laid his hand on his son's shoulder, and that gesture and the accompanying look, such as a surgeon might give his own child upon whom he was performing a cruelly painful operation, must have caused some part of what he felt to penetrate to the young man; for, instead of bursting out at his father, he said appealingly: "Would it be a very great disappointment to you if I were to go into—into some—some other line?"
"What line?" asked Hiram.