“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Dan warmly.
“The ‘old boy’ is nobody’s fool——”
“The who?” interrupted Dan sharply.
“Oh, my father, if that’s what you want me to say.”
“Look here, Walter, I haven’t any father. When I see some of you fellows with yours, do you know there’s nothing in all the world that I want deep down in my heart as I do what you’ve got and I haven’t. But if I did have one, and he was a man as true and interested as your father is and did as much for me as your father does for you, it doesn’t seem to me that I’d speak disrespectfully of him or let any other fellow do it, either.”
“Oh, he’s all right,” said Walter flippantly. “He means to do the right thing. I understand that as well as you do. The greatest trouble is that he doesn’t just understand a fellow——”
“Maybe a part of the trouble, Walter, is because he does understand. Ever thought of that?”
“No, that isn’t the way of it. My mother does.” Dan smiled as he recalled the weak and somewhat vain little woman who thought she was manifesting a greater love for her boy because she upheld and defended him right or wrong. “Of course I know,” resumed Walter, “that my father is a mighty smart man. It takes a cool hand to get ahead of him. He’s the best business man in his line. Why, Dan, he’s built up the business his father left him till now he has just four times as many men in the shops as he had when he began. When you say that he had been here all the morning, why, that puts things in a different light. He probably ‘got busy.’ Understand, Dan, that I didn’t really mean to accuse you of going to him with stories about me, though you’ll have to own up that it did look a bit suspicious when I found him alone with you and that he knew all about me.”