“I don’t do any more for him than you do, John,” protested Mrs. Borden.
“I know that. We both do too much. The boy would be better off if he did more for himself, but I haven’t the strength of character to do what I know I ought to do. I didn’t have, when I was a boy, a fraction of what Walter has. My father made me work for almost everything I had. I didn’t like it then, but he was a wiser as well as a better man than I am.”
“There couldn’t be a more generous man than you, John.”
“Couldn’t there?” laughed Mr. Borden. “Well, I told Dan that I knew as well as he did that Walter is conceited and selfish—he thinks a good deal more of himself than of anyone else——”
“You didn’t tell him that!”
“I most certainly did. I told him Walter needed some things that Dan had——”
“What, for example?”
“Oh, Walter doesn’t work, he’s too easily turned aside, he gives up when he ought to hang on, he is vain as a peacock, and he hasn’t the remotest idea of the existence of anyone besides himself on this planet.”
“You didn’t say that about your own boy!”