Colonel Lapham from the moment I saw him.He looked as if he 'meant business,' and I mean business too."The father smoked thoughtfully."Of course people do go into all sorts of things, as you say, and I don't know that one thing is more ignoble than another, if it's decent and large enough.In my time you would have gone into the China trade or the India trade--though I didn't; and a little later cotton would have been your manifest destiny--though it wasn't mine; but now a man may do almost anything.The real-estate business is pretty full.Yes, if you have a deep inward vocation for it, I don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do.
I fancy it's easy enough approaching the matter.We will invite Papa Lapham to dinner, and talk it over with him.""Oh, I don't think that would be exactly the way, sir,"said the son, smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness.
"No? Why not?"
"I'm afraid it would be a bad start.I don't think it would strike him as business-like.""I don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not.""Ah, we might say that if he were making the advances.""Well, perhaps you are right, Tom.What is your idea?""I haven't a very clear one.It seems to me I ought to get some business friend of ours, whose judgment he would respect, to speak a good word for me.""Give you a character?"
"Yes.And of course I must go to Colonel Lapham.
My notion would be to inquire pretty thoroughly about him, and then, if I liked the look of things, to go right down to Republic Street and let him see what he could do with me, if anything.""That sounds tremendously practical to me, Tom, though it may be just the wrong way.When are you going down to Mount Desert?""To-morrow, I think, sir," said the young man."I shall turn it over in my mind while I'm off."The father rose, showing something more than his son's height, with a very slight stoop, which the son's figure had not.
"Well," he said, whimsically, "I admire your spirit, and I don't deny that it is justified by necessity.
It's a consolation to think that while I've been spending and enjoying, I have been preparing the noblest future for you--a future of industry and self-reliance.You never could draw, but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint business shows that you have inherited something of my feeling for colour."The son laughed once more, and waiting till his father was well on his way upstairs, turned out the gas and then hurried after him and preceded him into his chamber.
He glanced over it to see that everything was there, to his father's hand.Then he said, "Good night, sir,"and the elder responded, "Good night, my son," and the son went to his own room.
