"But what are we to do with Oliver?" inquired James after a pause. "Of course he wouldn't be much good in the bank, but——"
And without finishing his sentence, he glanced up in a tentative, non-committal manner into Cyrus's face. He was a smaller and somewhat imperfect copy of his father, naturally timid, and possessed of a superstitious feeling that he should die in an accident. His thin anæmic features lacked the strength of the Treadwells, though in his cautious and taciturn way he was very far indeed from being the fool people generally thought him. Since he had never loved anything with passion except money, he was regarded by his neighbours as a man of unimpeachable morality.
At the end of the block, while the long pointed shadows of their feet kept even pace on the stone crossing, Cyrus answered abruptly: "Put him anywhere out of my sight. I can't bear the look of him."
"How would you like to give him something to do on the road? Put him under Borrows, for instance, and let him learn a bit about freight?"
"Well, I don't care. Only don't let me see him—he turns my stomach."
"Then as long as we've got to support him, I'll tell him he may try his hand at the job of assistant freight agent, if he wants to earn his keep."
"He'll never do that—just as well put him down under 'waste,' and have done with him," replied Cyrus, chuckling.
A little girl, rolling a hoop, tripped and fell at his feet, and he nodded at her kindly, for he had a strong physical liking for children, though he had never stopped to think about them in a human or personal way. He had, indeed, never stopped to think about anything except the absorbing problem of how to make something out of nothing. Everything else, even his marriage, had made merely a superficial impression upon him. What people called his "luck" was only the relentless pursuit of an idea; and in this pursuit all other sides of his nature had been sapped of energy. From the days when he had humbly accepted small commissions from the firm of Machlin & Company, to the last few years, when he had come to be regarded almost superstitiously as the saviour of sinking properties, he had moved quietly, cautiously, and unswervingly in one direction. The blighting panic of ten years before had hardly touched him, so softly had he ventured, and so easy was it for him to return to his little deals and his diet of crumbs. They were bad times, those years, alike for rich and poor, for Northerner and Southerner; but in the midst of crashing firms and noiseless factories, he had cut down his household expenses to a pittance and had gone on as secretively as ever—waiting, watching, hoping, until the worst was over and Machlin & Company had found their man. Then, a little later, with the invasion of the cigarette, there went up the new Treadwell factory which the subtle minded still attributed to the genius of Cyrus. Even before George and Henry had sailed for Australia, the success of the house in Dinwiddie was assured. There was hardly a drug store in America in those days that did not offer as its favourite James's crowning triumph, the Magnolia cigarette. A few years later, competition came like a whirlwind, but in the beginning the Treadwell brand held the market alone, and in those few years Cyrus's fortune was made.
"Heard from George lately?" he inquired, when they had traversed, accompanied by their long and narrow shadows, another couple of blocks. The tobacco trade had always been for him merely a single pawn in the splendid game he was playing, but he had suspected recently that James felt something approaching a sentiment for the Magnolia cigarette, and true to the Treadwell scorn of romance, he was forever trying to trick him into an admission of guilt.
"Not since that letter I showed you a month ago," answered James. "Too much competition, that's the story everywhere. They are flooding the market with cigarettes, and if it wasn't for the way the Magnolia holds on, we'd be swamped in little or no time."