"Well, take your choice. What do you want? Bank?"
But Albert had heard something about banks. Bank clerks, in these close-knit days, when anybody who fell out of the lock-step was lost, were but a sort of financial militia. Even if he were pushed along with the friendliest zeal, it might be years before he reached the place and the end desired. Nor had he much more fondness for growing up under the eye of McComas than under that of his own father.
"Bank?" repeated McComas.
"No."
McComas grinned. It was the grin he used when greatly pleased.
"One of those Western concerns?"
"Yes," said Albert; "send me West."
When Raymond heard that Albert had cast in his lot with McComas and meant soon to leave for Colorado, he winced. Albert, to him, was still a boy, and this term in the West but another kind of schooling. "Just as his mother tried to influence him before," said Raymond to me bitterly, "so McComas will influence him now." And I could not deny that McComas had the whip hand. The unintermittency of business correspondence, the cogency of a place on the payroll....
No, it was not to be denied that Raymond had lost Albert finally.
And Althea went to the train, to see him off—as to another war.