Bobby’s days now were beset from a hundred quarters with agonized appeals to change his policy. This man and that man and the other man high in commercial and social and political circles came to him with all sorts of pressure, and even Payne Winthrop and Nick Allstyne, two of his particular cronies of the Idlers’, not being able to catch him at the club any more, came up to his office.
“This won’t do, old man,” protested Payne; “we’re missing you at billiards and bridge whist, but your refusal to take part in the coming polo tourney was the last straw. You’re getting to be a regular plebe.”
“I am a plebe,” admitted Bobby. “What’s the use to deny it? My father was a plebe. He came off the farm with no earthly possessions more valuable than the patches on his trousers. I am one generation from the soil, and since I have turned over a furrow or two, just plain earth smells good to me.”
Both of Bobby’s friends laughed. They liked him too well to take him seriously in this.
“But really,” said Nick, returning to the attack, “the boys at the club were talking over the thing and think this rather bad form, this sort of a fight you’re making. You’re bound to become involved in a nasty controversy.”
“Yes?” inquired Bobby pleasantly. “Watch me become worse involved. More than that, I think I shall come down to the Idlers’, when I get things straightened out here, organize a club league and make you fellows march with banners and torch-lights.”
This being a more hilarious joke than the other the boys laughed quite politely, though Payne Winthrop grew immediately serious again.
“But we can’t lose you, Bobby,” he insisted. “We want you to quit this sort of business and come back again to the old crowd. There are so few of us left, you know, that we’re getting lonesome. Stan Rogers is getting up a glorious hunt and he wants us all to come up to his lodge for a month at least. You should be tired of this by now, anyhow.”
“Not a bit of it,” declared Bobby.
“Oh, of course, you have your money involved,” admitted Payne, “and you must play it through on that account; but I’ll tell you: if you do want to sell I know where I could find a buyer for you at a profit.”