Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/168

 cess in life; from this table, he would send Jay to school and himself depart to his solemn mystery of money-making called business.

Early hours and long days, hard work and unflagging industry were the very stuff of success, his father had assured him; and certainly his father had practiced through life those virtues; but here he was after all his years of early rising and late laboring, with his business at the mercy of Lew Alban's caprice (when old Stanley died) and of a nineteen year old girl's decision as to whether she should affront or flatter the wife of Phil Metten.

The world was changing too fast for him; but, following his momentary halt before Lida's surprising challenge as to her course with Mrs. Metten, he was gathering himself, Jay knew. After dinner he would tell his daughter-in-law what he thought of her and no count of business consequences would modify his moral duty in dealing with her.

Jay drew his wife aside, when they all rose from the table. "Come see my room," he suggested and he led her upstairs.

Upon the walls of his room, once the nursery, lived always in Jay's memory the bright band of Jack and hll and the Cow jumping over the Moon. Actually they were there, under the new, adult paper, for they had been painted upon the plaster. He told Lida of them, and, telling, he remembered how his eyes had followed them from his small bed in the last light of dusk and the first of dawn.

Often, when he was's awake at daybreak, his door would open. (He was not relating this.) His father would come