“Oh Yes.”
“I think you've chosen wisely, and I'm very glad. It's a weight off my mind. I think you'll be happier in the business than you would in the law; I think you'll enjoy it. You needn't look forward to a great deal of Ponkwasset Falls, unless you like.”
“I shouldn't mind going there,” said Dan listlessly.
“It won't be necessary—at first. In fact, it won't be desirable. I want you to look up the business at this end a little.”
Dan gave a start. “In Boston?”
“Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a place of our own, and to put you in charge.” Something in the young man's face expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, “Would that be distasteful to you?”
“Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I care to be in Boston.” He lifted his face and looked his father full in the eyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then the father knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong.
The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which they could be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, and cumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind, he withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk.
“Well,” said the elder lightly, as if Dan's not caring to be in Boston had no particular significance for him, “I don't know that I care to have you settle down to it immediately. I rather think I'd like to have you look about first a little. Go to New York, go to Philadelphia, and see their processes there. We can't afford to get old-fashioned in our ways. I've always been more interested by the aesthetic side of the business, but you ought to have a taste for the mechanism, from your grandfather; your mother has it.”
“Oh yes, sir. I think all that's very interesting,” said Dan.