He was sitting in the same position when his father entered, half an hour later, with an elate expression, which changed suddenly at sight of Louis’ smile; an old smile on a boyish face.
“So!” said Karl Metzerott; “but it is my blame for sending you as a child among those people! Ah! what a fool I was! What has she done to thee, Louis, to send thee home with a face like that?”
“It is not her fault, father, nor mine, nor any one’s, for that matter.”
“Tell me that! Nothing is her fault at thy age, Louis. Tell me about it, and let me be the judge. Have I not always warned thee? A man’s own senses might tell him that a bit of pink and white wax-work is not the wife for a workingman.”
Louis sighed. “It is true,” he said. “Father, I have thought and thought, but I cannot imagine her here,—or—myself anywhere else. For see! I have grown up at ‘Prices,’ father; these dear friends are my friends, part of my life; if I could leave it, only half of my heart could go with me; if I could rise into her world”—
“Rise? that is, lie, cheat, steal, do anything to get money! For it is money alone that makes equals in that world, my boy; have I not seen it?”
Louis bowed his head once more in sad acquiescence. His thoughts were too chaotic for words, but he felt dimly and confusedly that his father was right. Polly’s mercenariness was a nobler thing than Pinkie’s scorn of expense; nay, if he had known it, even the rough raillery of the board-room, quite as delicate as much schoolgirl teasing. “Prices” might be—was—in essentials the higher world; but since it was not Pinkie’s world the result was practically the same. Louis glanced around the plain, bare room, and thought of Alice’s dainty parlor, of the pink and white nest that sheltered his bird, of which he had once had an accidental glimpse,—and he sighed heavily.
“Why should you fancy her here?” asked Metzerott, interpreting the sigh aright. “She doesn’t suit you, and that’s all there is about it. Rise into her world indeed! I hope your father is an honest man, which is more than can be said of hers!”
“Oh! if you come to fathers!” said Louis proudly. “But there’s more in it than that, if I could only make you see it. I’ve been brought up in both worlds, father, and I know. Ours—yes, we are working for each other at ‘Prices,’ while in hers they work for themselves; that makes us higher; yet in some ways they are higher than us.”
“They’ve more money,” said his father scornfully, “and finer clothes”—