“I think I have noticed you about the city since your school closed,” Mr. Barrett proceeded. And without special interest he asked, whirling his chair and gazing out of the window at the mills: “How do you happen to be staying here in Stillwater this summer? I supposed pedagogues in vacation-time ran away from their schools as fast as they could.”
If John Barrett had not been staring at the mills he would have seen the flush that blazed on the young man’s cheeks at this sudden, blunt demand for the reasons why he stayed in town.
“If I had a home I should probably go there,” answered Wade; “but my parents died while I was in college—and—and high-school principals do not usually find summer resorts and European trips agreeing with the size of their purses.”
“Probably not,” assented the millionaire, calmly. A sudden recollection seemed to strike him. “Say, speaking of college—you’re the Burton centre, aren’t you—or you were? I was there a year ago when Burton clinched the championship. I liked your game! I meant to have said as much to you, but I didn’t get a chance, for you know what the push is on a ball-ground. I’m a Burton man, you know. I never miss a game. I’m glad to have such a chap as you at the head of our school. These pale fellows with specs aren’t my style!”
He turned and ran an approving gaze over Wade’s six feet of sturdy young manhood. With his keen eye for lines that revealed breeding and training, Barrett usually turned once to look after a handsome woman and twice to stare at a blooded horse. Men interested him, too—men who appealed to his sportsman sense. This young man, with the glamour of the football victories still upon him, was a particularly attractive object at that moment. He stared into Wade’s flushed face, evidently accepting the color as the signal that gratified pride had set upon the cheeks.
“You’ll weigh in at about one hundred and eighty-five,” commented the millionaire. It seemed to Wade that his tone was that of a judge appraising the points of a race-horse, and for an instant he resented the fact that Barrett was sizing him less as a man than as a gladiator. “Old Dame Nature put you up solid, Mr. Wade, and gave you the face to go with the rest. I wish I were as young—and as free!” He gave another look at the mills and scowled when he heard the mumble of men’s voices in the outer room. “When a man is past sixty, money doesn’t buy the things for him that he really wants.” It was the familiar cant of the man rich enough to affect disdain for money, and Wade was not impressed.
“I’d like to take my daughter across the big pond this summer,” the land baron grumbled, discontentedly, “but I never was tied down so in my life. I am directing-manager of the Umcolcus Association, and I’ve got all my own lands to handle besides, and with matters in the lumbering business as they are just now there are some things that you can’t delegate to agents, Mr. Wade.”
This man, confiding his troubles, did not seem the ogre he had been painted.
The young man had flushed still more deeply at mention of Barrett’s daughter, but Barrett was again looking at his squalling mills.