“Then who does the tutoring?  Who’re the nobodies that tutor the everybodies?”

Arthur grew cold, then hot.  He was cornered, therefore roused.  He stood, leaned against the table, faced his father defiantly.  “I see what you’re driving at, father,” he said.  “You feel I’ve wasted time and money at college, because I haven’t lived like a dog and grubbed in books day in and day out, and filled my head with musty stuff; because I’ve tried to get what I believe to be the broadest knowledge and experience; because I’ve associated with the best men, the fellows that come from the good families.  You accept the bluff the faculty puts up of pretending the A fellows are really the A fellows, when, in fact, everybody there and all the graduates and everyone everywhere who knows the world knows that the fellows in our set are the ones the university is proud of—­the fellows with manners and appearance and—­”

“The gentlemen,” interjected the father, who had not changed either his position or his expression.

“Yes—­the gentlemen!” exclaimed Arthur.  “There are other ideals of life besides buying and selling.”

“And working?” suggested Hiram.

“Yes—­and what you call working,” retorted Arthur, angry through and through.  “You sent me East to college to get the education of a man in my position.”

“What is your position?” inquired Hiram—­simply an inquiry.

“Your son,” replied the young man; “trying to make the best use of the opportunities you’ve worked so hard to get for me.  I’m not you, father.  You’d despise me if I didn’t have a character, an individuality, of my own.  Yet, because I can’t see life as you see it, you are angry with me.”

For answer Hiram only heaved his great shoulders in another suppressed sigh.  He knew profoundly that he was right, yet his son’s plausibilities—­they could only be plausibilities—­put him clearly in the wrong.  “We’ll see,” he said; “we’ll see.  You’re wrong in thinking I’m angry, boy.”  He was looking at his son now, and his eyes made his son’s passion vanish.  He got up and went to the young man and laid his hand on his shoulder in a gesture of affection that moved the son the more profoundly because it was unprecedented.  “If there’s been any wrong done,” said the old man—­and he looked very, very old now—­“I’ve done it.  I’m to blame—­not you.”

A moment after Hiram left the room, Adelaide hurried in.  A glance at her brother reassured her.  They stood at the window watching their father as he walked up and down the garden, his hands behind his back, his shoulders stooped, his powerful head bent.

“Was he very angry?” asked Del.

“He wasn’t angry at all,” her brother replied.  “I’d much rather he had been.”  Then, after a pause, he added:  “I thought the trouble between us was that, while I understood him, he didn’t understand me.  Now I know that he has understood me but that I don’t understand him”—­and, after a pause—­“or myself.”