“Now, Mr. Thompson wanted me to come to New York to—”
Mr. Leigh interrupted. “After dinner, Thomas, you will tell me all about it while you smoke.”
“I don't smoke,” said Tommy, with the proud humility of a martyr. But his father said nothing, and Tommy wondered whether the old man, not being himself a smoker, understood.
After dinner, in order that his father might understand the situation as it was, Tommy spoke in detail about Thompson—an elaborate character sketch to which his father listened gravely, nodding appreciatively from time to time. Occasionally Mr. Leigh frowned, and Tommy, seeing this, explained how those were the new business ideals of the great West, where Americanism was more robust than in the East—as though Tommy himself had been born and brought up west of the Rockies.
“And so I am going to try to place the two thousand shares of Tecumseh stock among personal friends. I'm going to see Rivington Willetts to-morrow morning—”
“Wait. Before you seek to interest investors you ought to be thoroughly familiar with the finances of the company, and I scarcely think your work or your training has given you the necessary knowledge.”
“I shall try to interest friends only, or their fathers. And I know as much as there is to know, since I have the figures in black and white—”
“The vender's figures, Thomas,” interjected Mr. Leigh in a warning voice.
“Thompson's figures,” corrected Tommy, in the voice of a supreme-court justice citing authorities. He took from his pocket the statement which the president of the Tecumseh Motor Company had given to him..
“Here, father, read this.”