Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/170

148 you?' And was I going to go to him—he was head of his class, mind you—and say, the Trust has treated me the way I wouldn't treat a dog—it's all up with me and you? I can go back and be foreman again at the works—we're bought up, chewed up and spit out like a wad o' paper?' Not much, I guess. No. Here's where I quit the honesty game, I said, for it don't pay. You stole my patent, and I shut up because I couldn't afford to fight you, and you raised me and raised me—and let me into the firm when you knew it was going to bust! Now, I says, since my boy's education has been stole from me, I'll steal it back, I says, and only from them that can afford it, too! And I'll use no lawyer to do it, either, and we'll have no trick-work with papers. I'll get it straight from the wives and daughters of the big thieves that pass the plate on Sundays."

Lindsay listened to Caroline moving over their heads; her steps seemed the only reality in this horrid dream.

"It—it will just about kill Jim," he said slowly.

"It would have killed him not to go to college,"