Thatcher looked at the end of his cigar and waited for Dan to reply.
"I've grown very fond of Allen. He's very unusual; he's full of surprises."
"That boy," said Thatcher, pointing his cigar at Dan, "is the greatest boy in the world; but, damn it all, I don't make him out."
"Well, he's different; he's an idealist. I'm not sure that he isn't a philosopher!"
Thatcher nodded, as though this were a corroboration of his own surmises.
"He has a lot of ideas that are what they call advanced, but it's not for me to say that he isn't right about them. He talks nonsense some of the time, but occasionally he knocks me down with a big idea—or his way of putting a big idea. He doesn't understand a good deal that he sees; and yet he sometimes says something perfectly staggering."
"He does; by George, he does! Damn it, I took him to see a glassworks the other day; thought it would appeal to his sense of what you call the picturesque; but, Lord bless me, he asked how much the blowers were paid and wanted me to raise their pay on the spot. That was one on me, all right; I'd thought of giving him the works to play with, but I didn't have the nerve to offer it to him after that. 'Fraid he'd either turn it down or take it and bust me."
Thatcher had referred to this incident with unmistakable pride; he was evidently amused rather than chagrined by his son's scorn of the gift of a profitable industry. "I offered him money to start a carpenter shop or furniture factory or anything he wanted to tackle, but he wouldn't have it. Said he wanted to work in somebody else's shop to get the discipline. Discipline? That boy never had any discipline in his life! I've kept my nose to the grindstone ever since I was knee-high to a toad just so that boy wouldn't have to worry about his daily bread, and now, damn it all, he runs a carpenter shop on the top floor of a house that stands me, lot, furniture, and all, nearly a hundred thousand dollars! I can't talk to everybody about this; my wife and daughters don't want any discipline; don't like the United States or anything in it except exchange on London; and here I am with a boy who wears overalls and tries to callous his hands to look like a laboring man. If you can figure that out, it's a damn sight more than I can do! It's one on Ed Thatcher, that's all!"
"If I try to answer you, please don't think I pretend to any unusual knowledge of human nature; but what I see in the boy is a kind of poetic attitude toward America—our politics, the whole scheme; and it's a poetic strain in him that accounts for this feeling about labor. And he has a feeling for justice and mercy; he's strong for the underdog." "I suppose," said Thatcher dryly, "that if he'd been an underdog the way I was he'd be more tickled at a chance to sit on top. When I wore overalls it wasn't funny. Well, what am I going to do with him?"
"If you really want me to tell you I'd say to let him alone. He's a perfectly clean, straight, high-minded boy. If he were physically strong enough I should recommend him to go to college, late as it is for him, or better, to a school where he would really satisfy what seems to be his sincere ambition to learn to do something with his hands. But he's all right as he is. You ought to be glad that his aims are so wholesome. There are sons of prosperous men right around here who see everything red."