“Call Shep and tell him to stop in this afternoon on his way home, and—Carroll”—Mills detained his secretary to impress him with his perfect equanimity—“call Mrs. Rawlings and ask how the Judge is. I understand he’s had a second stroke. I hate to see these older men going——”
“Yes, the Judge has been a great figure,” Carroll replied perfunctorily.
Carroll was troubled. He was fond of Shepherd Mills, recognized the young man’s fine qualities and sympathized with his high aims. There was something pitiful in the inability of father and son to understand each other. And he was not deceived by Franklin Mills’s characteristic attempt to conceal his displeasure at Shepherd’s sale of the stock.
It was evident from the manner in which the stock had passed through Gurley’s hands that Shepherd wished to hide the fact that he was selling. Poor Shep! There could have been no better illustration of his failure to understand his father than this. Carroll had watched much keener men than Shepherd Mills attempt to deceive Franklin Mills. Just why Shepherd should have sold the stock Carroll couldn’t imagine. Constance had, perhaps, been overreaching herself. No matter what had prompted the sale, Mills would undoubtedly make Shepherd uncomfortable about it—not explosively, for Mills never lost his perfect self-control—but with his own suave but effective method. Carroll wished there were something he could do to save Shep from the consequences of his folly in attempting to hide from Franklin Mills a transaction so obviously impossible of concealment.
III
Shepherd entered his father’s office as he always did, nervous and apprehensive.
“Well, Father, how’s everything with you today?” he asked with feigned ease.
“All right, Shep,” Mills replied pleasantly as he continued signing letters. “Everything all right at the plant?”
“Everything running smoothly, Father.”
“That’s good.” Mills applied the blotter to the last signature and rang for the stenographer. When the young woman had taken the letters away Mills filled in the assignment on the back of the certificate of stock in the Rogers Company which Carroll had brought him that morning and pushed it across the desk.