It was true. In that hour something precious went out of his life. No one, not even Trenn, had any idea what had happened. But every one saw that Nathaniel Mar was changed.
Trenn went to work on Karl Siegel’s ranch, and Harry presently announced that he meant to join him. No, he wasn’t going to finish at the High School. Trenn had an opportunity to go in with Siegel on a new deal, and Harry could be made use of, too, if he came now. Such an opportunity might never repeat itself. Mrs. Mar was of the same opinion as the boys, and Harry was in towering good spirits.
His father wondered dully. Ought he not give his younger son the same chance he’d given the elder, even if, like Trenn, Harry should fail utterly to see how great it was?
Mar shrank from a second ordeal, and yet he knew that, vaguely enough, he had been depending on Harry’s helping him to bear Trenn’s indifference and unbelief. Had he not for a year now, in any lighter hour, invariably said to himself: “After all, I have two boys. Perhaps Harry will be the one”—yes, he must tell Harry, or the boy might reproach him in time to come.
Trenn’s letter had arrived in the morning. All day Mar revolved in his head how he would present this other “opening” so that Harry— In the end he resolved to take the papers out of the safe, and simply turn them over to his son, as though the father were no longer there to give the story tongue. Mar took the precious packet home with him the same afternoon. Harry was out. That evening he was late for supper, and he came in full of the outfit he’d been buying.
“Buying an outfit already!” his father exclaimed.
“Of course! I don’t mean to let the grass grow—”
“Nor Trenn, apparently. I hadn’t heard that he was financing you.”
“He isn’t. I had a little saved up, and mother gave me the rest.”
Mar stared through his spectacles, and met the bright roving eyes of the lady.