"I'm sorry, Dick," he said. "I've always rather calculated somehow on having my boy's wishes come true."
My father spoke a little sharply.
"You must have a lot of confidence," he said, "in your boy's wishes!"
"I have!" said young Derry Willard's father, quite simply. "He's a good boy! Not only clever, I mean, but good! Never yet have I known him to wish for anything that wasn't the best!"
"They're too young," said my father.
"Youth," said Derry Willard's father, "is the one defect I know of that is incontestably remedial."
"How can they possibly know their own minds?" demanded my father.
"No person," said Derry Willard's father, "knows his own mind until he's ready to die. But the sooner he knows his own heart the sooner he's ready to begin to live."
My father stirred in his chair. He lit a cigar. It went out. He lit it again. It went out again. He jerked his shoulders. He looked nervous. He talked about things that nobody was talking about at all.
"The young rascal dropped a hundred-dollar bill—when he was here before!" he said. He said it as tho it was something very wicked.