“They almost got a steam yacht on me last year,” he went on.  “Hired a Vienna doctor to say I ought to be kept at sea between Gibraltar and the Bosphorus.  And here, by George, is America the dear, bully old America of Washington, Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln!  And they want to keep me chasing around among ruins and tombs!  I say to you, Mr. Harwood, in all solemnity, that I’ve goo-gooed my last goo-goo at the tombs of dead kings!”

They stood near the shop door during this interchange.  Dan forgot, in his increasing interest and mystification, that the “Courier’s” city editor was waiting for news of Thatcher, the capitalist.  Young Thatcher’s narrative partook of the nature of a protest.  He was seriously in rebellion against his own expatriation.  He stood erect now, with the color bright in his cheeks, one hand thrust into his pocket, the other clenching his pipe.

“I tell you,” he declared, “I’ve missed too much!  Life over here is a big thing!—­it’s wonderful, marvelous, grand, glorious!  And who am I to spend winters on the dead old Nile when history is being made right here on White River!  I tell you I want to watch the Great Experiment, and if I were not a poor, worthless, ignorant ass I’d be a part of it.”

Dan did not question the young fellow’s sincerity.  His glowing eyes and the half-choked voice in which he concluded gave an authentic stamp to his lament and pronouncement.  A look of dejection crossed his face.  He had, by his own confession, asked Dan into the house merely to have some one to talk to; he was dissatisfied, unhappy, lonely; and his slender figure and flushed cheeks supported his own testimony that his health had been a matter of concern.  The Nile and the Alps against which he had revolted might not be so unnecessary as he believed.

The situation was so novel that Harwood’s mind did not respond with the promptness of his heart.  He had known the sons of rich men at college, and some of them had been his friends.  It was quite the natural and accepted order of things that some children should be born to sheltered, pampered lives, while others were obliged to hew their own way to success.  He had observed in college that the sons of the rich had a pretty good time of it; but he had gone his own way unenviously.  It was not easy to classify young Thatcher.  He was clearly an exotic, a curious pale flower with healthy roots and a yearning for clean, free air.  Dan was suddenly conscious that the young fellow’s eyes were bent upon him with a wistfulness, a kind of pleading sweetness, that the reporter had no inclination to resist.  He delayed speaking, anxious to say the right word, to meet the plea in the right spirit.

“I think I understand; I believe I should feel just as you do if I were in your shoes.  It’s mighty interesting, this whole big scheme we’re a part of.  Over there on the other side it’s all different, the life, the aims, and the point of view.  And here we’ve got just what you call it—­the most wonderful experiment the world ever saw.  Great Scott!” he exclaimed, kindling from the spark struck by Thatcher’s closing words, “it’s prodigious, overwhelming!  There mustn’t be any question of losing!”