He lifted the latest model in straw hats from his handsome dark head and laughed with the employees of the bank.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that I’d better get on the job and give Father a rest? I have a feeling that I’d make a dandy bank president.”
With the laugh that went up pleasant on his ears, Junior opened the door of the back office and stepped in.
He said to his father: “Dad, forget figures for a minute. I want to ask you something.”
Moreland Senior indicated a chair.
“All right,” he said, “I am interested in anything you are. Out with it.”
Junior hesitated. He was studying as to the best way of approaching his father. Should he begin with what had occurred the night before, or should he go back to the very beginning and explain that ever since he could remember, Mahala had been the one girl with whom he wanted to play, for whom he cared, that from the hour of earliest preconceptions, he had selected for his very own? As he stood hesitating, he felt his father’s eyes on his face and realizing that they were full of sympathy and encouragement, he smiled. It was a brave attempt at a smile, but it happened that the quiver of a disappointed four-year-old ran across his lips. The elder Moreland saw, and instantly a wave of rage surged through him. How would any one, any one at all, least of all a slip of a girl, dare to hurt Junior?
“I don’t know,” he said in a deliberate voice, in which Junior instantly detected the strain of effort at self-control, “that you’ve anything to tell me, Junior. I’ve known that you liked Mahala Spellman all your life. I even made it my business to get on the other side of that oleander screen last night and hear what the young lady had to say. I’m right here to tell you that if you want her, you needn’t pay the slightest attention to what she says. She’ll find before she gets through with it, she hasn’t got the say.”
Junior studied his father in amazement.
“I don’t understand,” he said.