"You came straight from college?"
"No," he said, a little uneasily; "no. I finished three years ago. You see, my mother married an awfully rich old guy named Steele, the last year I was at college; and he gave me a desk in his office. He has two sons, but they're not my kind. Nice fellows, you know, but they work twenty hours a day, and don't belong to any clubs,—they'll both die rich, I guess,—and whenever I was late, or forgot something, or beat it early to catch a boat, they'd go to the old man. And he'd ask mother to speak to me."
"I see," said Patricia.
"After a while he got me a job with a friend of his in a Philadelphia iron-works," said the boy; "but that was a ROTTEN job. So I came back to New York; and I'd written a sketch for an amateur theatrical thing, and a manager there wanted me to work it up—said he'd produce it. I tinkered away at that for a while, but there was no money in it, and Steele sent me out to see how I'd like working in one of the Humboldt lumber camps. I thought that sounded good. But I got my leg broken the first week, and had to wire him from the hospital for money. So, when I got well again, he sent me a night wire about this job, and I went to see Kahn the next day, and came up here."
"I see," she said again. "And you don't think you'll stay?"
"Honestly, I can't, Patricia. Honest—you don't know what it is! I could stand Borneo, or Alaska, or any place where the climate and customs and natives stirred things up once in a while. But this is like being dead! Why, it just makes me sick to see the word 'New York' on the covers of magazines—I'm going crazy here."
She nodded seriously.
"Yes, I know. But you've got to do SOMETHING. And since your course was electrical engineering—! And the next job mayn't be half so easy, you know—!"
"Well, it'll be a little nearer Broadway, believe me. No, I'm sorry. I never knew two dandier people than you and your brother, and I like the work, but—!"
He drew a long breath on the last word, and Miss Chisholm sighed, too.