VI
Business once more!
It ought to be barred. I get enough of it in my daily routine without having it intrude here. Business should do no more than provide the platform and the scenic background for the display of young love, hope and beauty. But here we have to deal with the affairs of a worried and incompetent man half way through his fifties.
Raymond came in one morning, on my summons. His manner was depressed; it was becoming habitually so. I tried to cheer him with indifferent topics,—among them the horse-show, which I saw so unsatisfactorily and which I have described so inadequately. He had already heard about it from Albert, and he felt no relish for the friendliness Johnny McComas had displayed on that occasion.
"Trying to get him, too?" was Raymond's comment.
"Oh, I wouldn't quite say that...."
"I have a letter from his mother. She wants to know about college."
"Well, how are things?"