“All of them,” he blurted. “You know that none of those is the real reason,” he as suddenly protested. “It is only that when I come to tell you the actual reason I rather choke up and can’t.”
“You’re a mighty nice boy, Bobby,” she confessed. “Now sit down and behave, and tell me just what you have decided to do.”
“Well,” said he, accepting his defeat with great philosophy, since he had no reason to regard it as final, “of course, my decision is made for me. I’m to take hold of the business. I don’t know anything about it, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t go straight on as it always has.”
“Possibly,” she admitted thoughtfully; “but I imagine your father expected you to have rather a difficult time of it. Perhaps he wants you to, so that a defeat or two will sting you into having a little more serious purpose in life than you have at present. I’d like, myself, to see you handle, with credit to him and to you, the splendid establishment he built up.”
“If I do,” Bobby wanted to know, “will you marry me?”
“That makes eleven times. I’m not saying, Bobby, but you never can tell.”
“That settles it. I’m going to be a business man. Let me use your ’phone a minute.” It was one of the many advantages of the delightfully informal Turkish alcove that it contained a telephone, and in two minutes Bobby had his tailors. “Make me two or three business suits,” he ordered. “Regular business suits, I mean, for real business wear—you know the sort of thing—and get them done as quickly as you can, please. There!” said he as he hung up the receiver. “I shall begin to-morrow morning. I’ll go down early and take hold of the John Burnit Store in earnest.”
“You’ve made a splendid start,” commented Agnes, smiling. “Now tell me about the polo tournament,” and she sat back to enjoy his enthusiasm over something about which he was entirely posted.
He was good to look at, was Bobby, with his clean-cut figure and his clean-cut face and his clean, blue eyes and clean complexion, and she delighted in nothing more than just to sit and watch him when he was at ease; he was so restful, so certain to be always telling the truth, to be always taking a charitably good-humored view of life, to turn on wholesome topics and wholesome points of view; but after he had gone she smiled and sighed and shook her head.
“Poor Bobby,” she mused. “There won’t be a shred left of his tender little fleece by the time he gets through.”