“Yes,” he assented eagerly. “You know he just pretends that I’m the head of the plant; Fields is the real authority there. It’s not the president but the vice-president who has the say about things. Father consults Fields constantly. He doesn’t trust me—I’m just a figurehead.”
“Fields is such an ass,” remarked Constance with a shrug of her shapely shoulders. “An utterly impossible person. Why not just let him do all the explaining to your father? If any mistakes are made at the plant, then it’s on him.”
“But that’s not the way of it,” Shepherd protested plaintively. “He gets the praise; I get the blame.”
“Oh, well, you can’t make your father over. You ought to be glad you’re not of his hard-boiled variety. You’re human, Sheppy, and that’s better than being a magnificent iceberg.”
“Father doesn’t see things; he doesn’t realize that the world’s changing,” Shepherd went on stubbornly. “He doesn’t see that the old attitude toward labor won’t do any more.”
“He’ll never see it,” said Constance. “Things like that don’t hit him at all. He’s like those silly people who didn’t know there was anything wrong in France till their necks were in the guillotine.”
“I told you about that clubhouse I wanted to build for our people on the Milton farm? I hate to give that up. It would mean so much to those people. And he was all wrong in thinking it would injure the property. I think it’s only decent to do something for them.”
“Well, how can you do it without your father?” she asked, shifting herself for a better scrutiny of her head in the mirror.
“You know that little tract of land—about twenty acres, back of the plant? I could buy that and put the clubhouse there. I have some stock in the Rogers Trust Company I can sell—about two hundred shares. It came to me through mother’s estate. Father has nothing to do with it. The last quotation on it is two hundred. What do you think of that?”
“Well, I think pretty well of it,” said Constance. “Your father ought to let you build the clubhouse, but he has a positive passion for making people uncomfortable.”