“‘Mr. Hunt,’ he said, and his eye had a twinkle I’ve seen there several times, ‘a precocity in paleontology is a species new to me.’
“Of course, Perry, I had to back water a bit.”
“You needn’t have, Father,” protested Perry. “I don’t want to brag, but I’ll just show him!”
“That’s the right spirit, my son,” replied the other, “but you’ve a long road to travel. I went just far enough along that road myself to see what a long journey it is.” For a moment the counting-room and the figures and the complexities of modern business life faded away from the old financier’s mind and he looked forward unseeingly and reminiscently. “I’d have liked to have gone on with it,” he added, “but other things came between.”
Perry kept silent a minute or two, then said, with boyish gentleness:
“We’ll be in on it together, Father, anyway. And I feel great about it, really.”
“Of course we’ll be in on it together, as you put it,” the other said, shaking himself free of memories, “and you’ll have to make a record for yourself out there. It’s a good thing for you that you’re so far ahead in your school work.”
Perry looked up surprisedly.
“How’s that?” he asked.
His father smiled quietly.