Bunny, as we know, possessed the requirements of a fraternity career; he had Anglo-Saxon features, and plenty of big sweaters, and drove to school in a car of that year’s model. He was taken up by an exclusive society, and was soon in demand for whatever was going on. He was enormously interested in everything; he had never imagined there were so many young people in the world before, and he wanted to know them all. He raced about with them from one thing to another, and watched with open eyes and listened with open ears to everything that came from either the teachers or the pupils. But all the time there was something which set him apart from the rest—something sober and old-fashioned and “queer.” It came, no doubt, from his knowing so much about the oil business; Bertie was right in her cruel remark that he had oil stains under his finger-nails. He would never share the idea of other darlings of luxury, that “money grows on trees;” he knew that it comes by hard and dangerous work. Also, Bunny had to meet the situation at home, which he understood quite clearly; his father wasn’t at all sure that high school was the best place for a boy, and was watching and listening all the time, to see what sort of ideas Bunny was getting. So the boy was always comparing the school’s kind of education with Dad’s kind, and which was really right?
Before starting out in his new career Bunny received what parents know as a “serious talk”; and that was curious and puzzling. First, Dad was going to give him a car, and there must be rules about it. He must give his word never to exceed the speed limit, whether in the city or outside; and that was certainly a curious case of the double standard of morals! But Dad met it frankly; he was mature, and could judge about speeds; moreover, he had important business for his excuse, but Bunny was to start for school early, and the rest of the time he would be driving for pleasure. He might take out others in his car, but he must never let anyone drive the car but himself; Dad had no money to run a free garage for a high school fraternity, and it would be convenient for Bunny to be able to say, once for all, that his father had laid down the law in that matter.
Furthermore, Dad wanted Bunny to promise him not to smoke tobacco or drink liquor until he was twenty-one. Here again was the “double standard,” and Dad was frank about it. He had learned to smoke, but wished he hadn’t; if Bunny wanted to acquire the habit, it was his right, but Dad thought he ought to wait until he was old enough to know what he was doing, and until he had got his full growth. And the same applied to liquor. Dad drank very little now, but there had been a time in his life when he had come close to becoming a drunkard, and so he was afraid of it, and Bunny’s being allowed to go to college—at least on Dad’s money—would have to be dependent upon his promising to avoid the drinking-bouts. Bunny said all right, sure; that was easy enough for him. He would have liked to ask more about Dad’s own story, but he did not quite like to. He had never seen Dad drunk; and it was a startling idea to contemplate.
Finally there was the matter of women; and here, apparently, Dad could not bring himself to be frank. Two things he said: first, Bunny was known to have a father with a pile of money, and this exposed him to one of the worst perils of young men. All kinds of women would be a-tryin’ to get a-hold of him, jist in order to get him to spend money on them, or to blackmail him; and Bunny would be disposed to trust women, so he must be warned about this. Dad told him dreadful stories about rich young men, and the women into whose hands they had fallen, and how it had wrecked their lives and brought shame upon their families. And then, there was the matter of disease; loose women were very apt to have diseases, and Dad told something about this, and about the quacks who prey upon ignorant and frightened boys. If one got into trouble of that sort, one must go to a first-class doctor.
And that was all Dad had to say. Bunny took it gratefully, but he wished there might have been more; he would have liked to ask his father many questions, but he could not bring himself to do it, in the face of his father’s evident shrinking. Dad’s manner and attitude seemed to say that there was something so inherently evil about sex that you jist couldn’t bring yourself to talk about it; it was a part of your life that you lived in the dark, and never dragged out into the light. Bunny’s idea was that his father’s discourse didn’t apply very much to himself. He knew there were dirty boys, but he was not one, and never expected to be.
The matter was made easier for Bunny by the fact that he very soon fell severely in love. There were such swarms of charming young feminine things in the school, it was simply not possible to escape them, especially when your possessions and social standing were such that so many of them set out after you! Some young misses were too bold in their advances, or too obviously coy, and repelled the shy lad; the one who secured him was very demure and still, so that his imagination could endow her with romantic qualities. Rosie Taintor was her name, and she had hair that made a tail half-way down her back, and was fluffy on her forehead, with golden glints; she was even more shy than Bunny, and had little conversation, but that was not necessary, for she had a great power of admiration, and had a phrase by which she expressed it: things were “wonderful”; they grew more and more “wonderful,” with soulful, mysterious whispers; the oil business was especially “wonderful,” and Rosie never tired of being told about it, which pleased Bunny, who had much to tell. Rosie’s father, and also her mother, were dentists, and this is not an especially romantic occupation, so naturally the child thought it thrilling to dash about the country as Bunny did, and direct armies of labor, and command vast treasures to flow out of the earth.
Bunny would take her for rides; and when they were out in the country, where it was safe, Bunny would drive with one hand, and the other hand would rest on Rosie’s, and truly “wonderful” were the thrills that would steal over both of them. They were content to ride that way for hours; or to get out and wander in the hills, and gather wild flowers, and sit and watch the sunset. Bunny was full of reverence, and when once or twice he dared so far as to place a kiss upon his adored one’s cheek, it was with almost religious awe. When the weather was not suitable for outdoor courtship, he would visit her home, where the mother and father had a hobby, the collecting of old English prints; these were framed on all the walls, and there were stacks of them you could look at, quaint eighteenth-century scenes of hunting gentlemen in red coats with packs of hounds, and red-cheeked barmaids serving pots of ale to topers with big pipes. Bunny would look at these for hours—for it took only one hand to turn them over. What is there that is not “wonderful,” when you are so young, and at the same time so good? It made Bunny walk on air, just to buy a new straw hat, and meet his chosen one upon the street, and anticipate her comments!
II
When Dad took his business trips now he took them alone; that is, unless he could arrange them for week-ends and holidays. He didn’t like going alone; and Bunny for his part, always had a part of his mind on Dad, and when Dad got back, he would hear all the details of how things were going.
There were six wells now at Lobos River, and they were all “paying big.” Dad had four more drilling, and had deepened eleven of his old Antelope wells, and had a pipe-line there, through which a river of wealth was flowing to him. On the Bankside lease he had six wells, all on production, and he had paid Mr. Bankside something over a million dollars of royalty, and had only got started, so he said. He had a good well on the next lease, the Ross-Wagstaff, and three more drilling, and out about half a mile to the north he was opening up new territory with the Ross-Armitage No. 1.