His sensitive face so clearly indicated his disappointment that Bruce, not knowing what lay behind this unexpected revival of the clubhouse plan, said, with every wish to be kind:
“Very likely Mr. Freeman would be glad to let me do the work—but I’d rather you asked him. I’d hate to have him think I was going behind his back to take a job. You can understand how I’d feel about it.”
“I hadn’t thought of that at all!” said Shepherd sincerely. “And of course I respect your feeling.” Then with a little toss of the head and a gesture that expressed his desire to be entirely frank, he added: “You understand I’m doing this on my own hook. I think I told you my father thought it unwise for the battery company to do it. But I’m going ahead on my own responsibility—with my own money.”
“I see,” said Bruce. “It’s fine of you to want to do it.”
“I’ve got to do it!” said Shepherd, slapping his hand on his knee. “And of course my father and the company being out of it, it’s no one’s concern but my own!”
The door was open. Connie Mills’s laugh for a moment rose above the blur of talk in the adjoining rooms. Shepherd’s head lifted and his lips tightened as though he gained confidence from his wife’s propinquity. Mrs. Freeman appeared at the door, demanding to know if they wanted tea, and noting their absorption withdrew without waiting for an answer.
It was clear enough that Shepherd meant to put the scheme through without his father’s consent, even in defiance of his wishes. The idea had become an obsession with the young man; but his sincere wish to promote the comfort and happiness of his employees spoke for so kind and generous a nature that Bruce shrank from wounding him. Seeing Bruce hesitate, Shepherd began to explain the sale of his trust stock to obtain the money, which only increased Bruce’s determination to have nothing to do with the matter.
“Why don’t you take it up with Mr. Carroll?” Bruce suggested. “He might win your father over to your side.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that! Carroll, you know, is bound to take father’s view of things. Father will be all right about it when it’s all done. Of course after the work starts he’ll know, so it won’t be a secret long. I’m going ahead as a little joke on him. I think he’ll be tickled to know I’ve got so much initiative!”
He laughed in his quick, eager way, hoping that he had made this convincing. Bruce, from his observation of Franklin Mills, was not so sanguine as to the outcome. Mills would undoubtedly be very angry. On the face of it he would have a right to be. And one instinctively felt like shielding Shepherd Mills from his own folly.