Tom answered promptly and without apparent reserve.
"The job's big enough, but I don't want to stay here and yoke up with the Farleys; they'd ruin me in a year."
"Get the better of you in the business—is that what you're aimin' to say?"
"Not exactly. I'm still brash enough to believe I could hold my own on that score. But—oh, well; you know what we found out last summer about their business methods. I can do business that way, too; as a matter of fact, I did do a good bit more of it last year than you knew anything about. But I'm out of it now, and I mean to stay out."
A longer interval of silence followed, and at the end of it another query.
"Is that all that's the matter, Buddy?"
"No—it isn't," hesitantly. "I'm seventeen other kinds of a fool, too, pappy."
"Reckon ye couldn't make out to onload the whole of it on to a pair o' right old shoulders, could ye, son Tom?" was the gentle invitation.
"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. I'm foolish about Ardea; been that way ever since she used to wear frocks and I used to run barefoot. I don't believe I could stand it to stay here and be her husband's business partner."
Caleb was shrouding himself in tobacco smoke and nodding complete intelligence.