“I? Not in a thousand years!” grinned the son whose light was of a proper filial brightness. “I’ve known all along that the Middleboro Security would have to be wound up some time. Dad is all the fine things you can say of him, Bert, but he wasn’t cut out for a successful banker. He knows it as well as anybody.”
Oswald looked up questioningly. “You haven’t any twinges of your own, Dave? It used to be the town’s idea that you’d some day come back and marry Judith Fallon and settle down to be Vallory Number Two in the banking business.”
“Marry Judith? What put that idea into the town’s head—or yours?”
“You did,” said Oswald gravely.
“Great Scott! Can’t a man be just ordinarily chummy with a girl he’s known all his life without having the gossips of a country-town tie a tin can to him?”
“With a number of them, yes; but with one, no.”
“Bosh!” said David.
“No, it isn’t ‘bosh.’ You’ve specialized on Judith; I’ve seen it myself. Candidly, David, I’ve tried to shut my eyes to it, partly because I hoped it might die out. Judith’s a good girl, and in her own class she is the prettiest thing that was ever turned loose in a world of more or less squashy young men. But I can’t seem to see her calling herself Mrs. Vallory.”
“You needn’t try.”
Oswald’s eyebrows went up. “She has turned you down?”