“Yours respectfully,
“Virgil Mcintire.”
Bradley Wentworth received and read this letter in bitterness of spirit.
“Why will that boy thwart me?” he asked himself. “I have mapped out a useful and honorable career for him. I am ready to provide liberally for all his wants—to supply him with fine clothes as good, I dare say, as are worn by the Astors and Vanderbilts, and all I ask in return is, that he will study faithfully and prepare himself for admission to college next summer. I did not fare like him when I was a boy. I had no rich father to provide for my wants, but was compelled to work for a living. How gladly would I have toiled had I been situated as he is! He is an ungrateful boy!”
Bradley Wentworth was not altogether justified in his estimate of himself as a boy. He had been very much like Victor, except that he was harder and less amiable. He had worked, to be sure, but it was not altogether because he liked it, but principally because he knew that he must. He, like Victor, had exceeded his income, and it was in consequence of this that he had forged the check for which he had induced his fellow-clerk, Warren Lane, to own himself responsible. He forgot all this, however, and was disposed to judge his son harshly.
By the same mail with Doctor McIntire’s letter came the following letter from Victor:
“Dear Father:—I meant to write you last week but was too busy”—”Not with your studies, I’ll be bound,” interpolated his father—“besides there isn’t much to write about here. It is a fearfully slow place”—“You wouldn’t find it so if you spent your time in study,” reflected Mr. Wentworth—“I don’t enjoy Latin and Greek very much, I don’t see what good they are ever going to do a fellow. You never studied Latin or Greek, and I am sure you have been very successful in life. I have an intimate friend here, Arthur Grigson, who is going to spend next year in traveling. He will go all over the United States to begin with, including the Pacific coast. I wish you would let me go with him. I am sure I would learn more in that way than I shall from the stuffy books I am studying here under that old mummy, Dr. McIntire. Arthur thinks he shall be ready to start in about six weeks. Please give your consent to my going with him by return of mail, so that I may begin to get ready. He thinks we can travel a year for two thousand dollars apiece.
“Your affectionate son,
“Victor.”
Bradley Wentworth frowned ominously when he read this epistle.