"Much she would have cared what you wanted!" chuckled Jardin.
"She would have done exactly as I said," Bill insisted. "We always talk things over together and never decide any really big things without a good old consultation."
"Nobody ever consults me," grumbled Frank.
"None of the women consult me," said Jardin. "They know I won't be bothered with them. Dad and I usually go over things together."
How Horace Jardin's father would have laughed if he could have heard his son and heir make that remark! Horace was Mr. Jardin's greatest care and problem. He often said that his son caused him more trouble than it gave him to run all his factories. Mr. Jardin was a very unwise man who loved his only son so much that he did not seem able to make him obey. Horace had not been a bad boy to start with, but twelve years of having his own way and feeling that, as he said, he could work his father and mother for anything that trouble could procure or money buy had made him selfish, grasping and unreliable. Other and graver faults were developing in him fast, to his mother's amazement and his father's sorrow.
When Mr. Jardin found that he must go down into the oil fields to look after his wells there, he was greatly relieved and pleased to find that he could leave his son with such pleasant people as the Andersons. He knew that for awhile at least the novelty of being right at an Aviation Post would keep Horace out of any serious mischief. In a measure he was right. The discipline and routine, the sharp commands, the rage of the instructors if anything went even a shade wrong, impressed Horace as he had never been impressed before. All the good in him came to the surface; the bad hid itself away.
Unfortunately, however, while Horace was spending his time in what seemed to all a highly creditable manner, his influence over Frank was bad, and grew worse as time went on. He absorbed like a sponge every word of Jardin's boastful tales; he learned a thousand new ways in which to gain his own ends; he learned to cheat; he learned to lie without the feeling of guilt and distress that used to bother him when he slipped from the truth. And most of all, he was made to feel that there was nothing so necessary as money, money and still more money. Every letter from Mr. Jardin brought Horace a check for anything from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, and this money was spent like water.
Frank, who had thought his allowance of a dollar a week a fine and generous amount, watched Jardin buy his way and squander money in every direction. Frank commenced to worry about school. It must be as Horace said: useless to try to be happy or comfortable unless one had a pocket full of change all the time. He commenced to wish for some money, then the wish changed, and he wished for a certain sum, the amount he thought would be sufficient to carry him through the three terms of school. He made up his mind that he wanted six hundred dollars. Where this vast sum was to come from he did not know. He knew very well that his father and mother would not give it to him. He could not earn it. Only a few weeks later the boys would be sent east to school. Six hundred dollars he wanted, and his whole mind seemed to focus on that amount like a burning glass, and the thought of it scorched him.
All through luncheon Frank thought of the money. He went off into day-dreams in which he rescued the daughter of the Colonel from all sorts of dangers and invariably after each rescue, the Colonel would say, "My boy, thanks are too tame. I insist, in fact I order you to accept this little token of my regard." And then he would press into Frank's hand six hundred dollars. It was thrilling; and in a day-dream so easy.
The fact that the Colonel's only daughter was a strapping damsel who stood five feet eight and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds and always took the best of care of herself in all kinds of tight places without asking odds of anyone, did not affect Frank's day-dreams at all. Neither did the fact that the Colonel was well known to be so close with his money that he had learned to read the headlines upside down so that he seldom had to buy a paper of a newsy! Six hundred dollars ... it would have killed him!