"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of wolves—that's the gist of it—fortune-hunters—with tushes like the ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain—the father and the mother and the girl, too.
"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of money—and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker for looks, all right—and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so, quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my son and heir from a passel of butchers,' I says, 'before they have him scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday trade,' I says, 'with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry's chest,' I says."
"Are the New York girls so designing?" asked Percival.
"Is Higbee's ham good to eat?" replied Higbee, oracularly.
"So," he continued, "when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just casually mentioned to the old lady—say, she's got an eye that would make liquid air shiver—that cold blue like an army overcoat—well, I mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as if he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind-hearted, liberal old father.
"Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold storage with the whole family from that moment. I see those fellows in the laboratories are puttering around just now trying to get the absolute zero of temperature—say, Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry.
"Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against it—right close up against it, so you couldn't see daylight between 'em. 'You're twenty-five,' I says, 'and you play the best game of pool, I'm told, of any of the chappies in that Father-Made-the-Money club you got into,' I says; 'but I've looked it up,' I says, 'and there ain't really what you could call any great future for a pool champion,' I says, 'and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you was at it,' I says. 'Now you go back home and tell the manager to set you to work,' I says, 'and your wages won't be big enough to make you interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,' I says. 'And you make a study of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like your father done, and make a man of yourself, and then sometime,' I says, 'you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he needs it.'"
"And how did poor Henry take all that?"
"Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but finally when he see he was up against it, and especially when he see how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got sense, though he doesn't look it—Henry has—though Lord knows I didn't pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I told him. It's the greatest thing ever happened to him. He ain't so fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll be a man before his dad's through with him."
"But weren't the young people disappointed?" asked Percival; "weren't they in love with each other?"