If punctuality is a virtue presaging business success, Allen gave
evidence, the following afternoon, of a brilliant future. Previously,
he had made no criticism of the condition in which his motor-car was
delivered to him at the garage, but this time the men found him
strangely unreasonable. The brasses had to be repolished, the hood
opened up, and the dust wiped from the long-neglected creases, and every
detail was inspected with a carefulness which created comment.
"Goin' to sell his car," one of the men remarked, sententiously, to
which sage comment his companion nodded acquiescence.
In spite of the delay thus caused, Allen shut off his power in front of
the hotel entrance at exactly the appointed hour. He bounded into the
lobby, and a few moments later was ushered into the elevator and guided
to the Gorhams' apartment.
"Why, it's Riley!" the caller exclaimed, enthusiastically, as the door
was opened for him by Mr. Gorham's aged retainer--"it's the same Riley
who used to box my ears when I tramped over his flower-beds in
Pittsburgh."
The old man regarded the visitor attentively. "Shure it's Misther Allen
Sanford, grown out iv his short pants into a fine young man, so he has."
A broad grin replaced the questioning expression on his face. "I did
box ye'er ears good, didn't I, sor? but go along wid yer, th' trouble
ye made me, ye an' Miss Alice a-traipsin' over me flower-beds." Then,
with a sigh: "Ah, sor, I remimber it as if 'twas yisterday. Miss Alice's
mother was livin' thin, God rist her soul. Thank ye, sor, f'r
remimberin' me. I'll call Mrs. Gorham an' Miss Alice."
It was the girl who appeared first, greeting Allen with frank
cordiality.
"Eleanor will be ready in a moment," she said. "Isn't this the greatest
coincidence?" she continued. "Yesterday at this time I had no idea you
were within a thousand miles, and now it seems as if we might almost be
back in Pittsburgh again, living the same childish life and playing the
same games."
"It was certainly a dandy coincidence for me," Allen agreed, "but I
don't quite follow you back to the kid games we played."
"Why, Allen!" Alice reproached him, "have you forgotten the motor rides
you and I took with wash-tubs, turned upside down, for seats, and the
remnant of your express-wagon for a steering-wheel? My! how fast we used
to go!"
"That's so!" he admitted. "I'd forgotten all about it. You used to look
great sitting on that tub."
"Freckles and all?"
"I didn't remember the freckles, either, until you spoke of them. You
were a little corker, even then."
"Even then?" Alice repeated, without intending to.
"No one has told you that you've gone backward in looks, has he?" Allen
laughed, looking straight into her face. Then he continued: "There's one
other game we played, which I haven't forgotten: Do you remember how we
used to keep house together? You were Mrs. Allen Sanford then, and we
had everything fixed up--"
Alice sobered. "I--I think I have forgotten that one," she said. "Isn't
it ridiculous what games children do play?"
"But the motor-car game has come true," he insisted, "and you'll look
just as good to me sitting in the real car, as you used to on top of
that tub. And as for the other--"
"How long Eleanor is taking!" she interrupted; "I'll run and find her."
With which she disappeared, returning almost immediately, accompanied by
Mrs. Gorham.
"I shan't be asked again, if I keep you waiting so long, shall I?"
Eleanor apologized.
"The appointed time always arrives at the same moment that Mrs. Gorham
does," Allen replied.
"So!" Eleanor was frankly surprised by the boy's gallantry. "If this is
a sample, I must agree with your father that diplomacy is your natural
field. It would be a pity to waste that in a business office."
"Don't you join the opposition, Mrs. Gorham," he said, seriously. "I'm
going to have a hard enough time with the pater as it is. Now, if
you're ready, shall we start? It isn't going to be the most sociable
arrangement in the world, with me driving the car, but we'll go slowly,
which will give us a chance to visit."
With Fort Meyer as the objective point, Allen took the road through Rock
Creek Park to Chevy Chase, feeling attracted, perhaps unconsciously,
because it was there he had renewed this acquaintance which promised to
end the _ennui_ he had experienced during the weeks he had spent in
Washington. Slowing his speed down to a point requiring the least
attention, he was able to converse with his guests. Alice had said
little since they left the hotel, but at last she found an opportunity
to free her mind.
"Eleanor wasn't serious in what she said about your going into
diplomacy, Allen. Any ability a man has in that line is just as valuable
in business."
Mrs. Gorham laughed as she turned to Alice. "Has that been troubling
you, my dear?" Then to Allen: "You touched on a very live wire when you
said what you did yesterday, Mr. Sanford. Alice thinks that a man who
chooses anything but a business career is blind to what life offers
him."
"You do too, don't you, Allen?" the girl asked.
"Why--yes," he answered. "I haven't exactly analyzed it, but I know I'd
rather go into business than into the diplomatic service."
"But you must have some reason for it," she urged.
"I have--I don't want to spend my life in other countries. Little old
New York is good enough for me. I have lots of friends there, and that's
where I'd like to settle down."
"New York is a hard place for a young man to start his career," said
Mrs. Gorham. "You will find there an absolute intolerance for the man in
the making. New York demands the finished product."
"But you don't have to start in New York," Alice added. "You could make
your success in some other city, and then come to New York if you wanted
to."
Allen became unusually thoughtful as the conversation progressed.
"Gee!" he said; "I knew that I wanted to go into business, but I didn't
realize how much there was to think over before doing it."
"But it's worth all the time and thought you can give to it," the girl
said, enthusiastically. "I can't imagine anything grander than to stand
at the threshold of the world ready to enter the battle of life, to
struggle with the obstacles and to conquer them. Think, Allen--just
think of what you have before you, while we girls never get any such
chance at all."
"Yes." Allen hesitated, carried off his feet by the intensity of the
words and the rapt expression of her face. "Yes, I guess it is grand,
though it never struck me just that way before. I say!--" he continued,
after a moment's pause, "you're an enthusiast on this business question,
aren't you?"
"Could she be Robert Gorham's daughter and not be an enthusiast?" Mrs.
Gorham asked.
"If father would only let me, I know I could make a success in
business," Alice continued. "I watch him, when he least suspects it; I
study the papers which he leaves around, and sometimes it seems as if I
just must be a boy, and get into the thick of it."
"What a funny idea!" Allen remarked. "I never thought girls cared
anything about business."
"But it's no use," she bemoaned. "I've got to be a girl whether I like
it or not; but you haven't any such handicap."
"Haven't I?--you forget the pater."
"If you felt as strongly about it as I do, you could persuade him."
"Have you--met the pater?" he asked, significantly.
Alice smiled for a moment, and then became serious again. "If you
have determination enough to succeed in business, Allen, the same
characteristic will win out with your father."
The boy did not know quite what to answer. Stephen Sanford insisted
that the only reason Allen showed a preference for business was because
he knew his father had set his heart on a different career for him. It
may have been merely an unconscious assertion of his budding manhood
which rebelled against having his life-work laid out for him without
consultation, just as his governess used to lay out his clothes. At all
events, from his very nature, Allen had not considered the matter as
seriously as he now saw Alice had done, and he was entirely unequal to
the task of holding up his end of the discussion. So, after a few
moments' silence, during which she watched him with eager expectancy, he
turned his face toward her, and grinned broadly.
"I'm mighty glad you are a girl," he said, irrelevantly; "and I'm mighty
glad you can't go into business."
Alice was disappointed on his account, but she chose to reply only to
his reference to her.
"Of course," she pouted. "You men are all alike. You're selfish and
unsympathetic. You want all the interesting things for yourselves,
and--some of you--don't even know why you want them."
"I really believe you're getting personal." Allen laughed. "Don't knock;
come right in. Now, to heap coals of fire upon your head, I'll tell you
what I'll do, Alice; I'll divide chances with you, beginning with the
first."
"Do you mean to say you haven't had even a first chance yet?"
He nodded cheerfully. "Not a single first, to say nothing of doubtful
seconds."
"Then it's because you haven't tried," she asserted.
"Of course; but that doesn't mean that some one else hasn't tried. I've
been the dutiful son, waiting for 'papa' to show him that the paternal
way is the only way; but even the pater hasn't proved a blooming success
in that line. The real trouble is that the old man is too conscientious.
Just as the President gets all worked up and just crazy to send me as
minister plenipotentiary to the Republic of Zuzu, the pater coughs
guiltily, and murmurs, 'Oh, yes; he's a good boy, if he is my son, but
he hasn't been brought up in my school,' and shows by every movement
that he knows he's passing off a gold brick. Then, of course, the whole
game is up."
"Why doesn't he take you into his own business?" Mrs. Gorham asked.
"Jealousy or judgment; can't say which."
"Do be serious, Allen," Alice insisted. "I don't believe you have any
strong feelings about it anyway. No wonder your father gets out of
patience with you if you talk to him about it as you do to us."
"Oh, he gets out of patience, all right," Allen admitted, "but it's
simply because he can't refute my arguments. He talks about what he was
doing at my age, but I tell him my record is a whole lot better than
his. He couldn't afford to go to college, while I could, and at the same
proud point in our careers I was successfully touching him for five
hundred a month, while he was with great difficulty earning a hundred
and fifty, on which he supported a family. But the pater--well, the
pater has a way of looking at things which is all his own."
"There is absolutely no use expecting to talk business with you," the
girl declared. "Father won't discuss it with me, and you won't be
serious at all, and I know Mr. Covington is really laughing at me all
the time, even though he tries to make me think that he looks upon me as
a very business-like young woman."
"Who is Mr. Covington?" Allen asked, bluntly, inwardly resenting the
fact that any one except her father was as intimate with Alice as the
words indicated.
"He's father's right-hand man in the Consolidated Companies. If you
could once see him and father at work and hear them talk you would
understand the fascination of it."
"Then you like business conversation?" The boy found it difficult to
comprehend.
"Better than anything else in the world."
Allen became really serious. "If that's the case," he said,
emphatically, "I'm going to become a man of affairs, just to give
you that pleasure."
Alice clapped her hands with delight. "What are you going to do?" she
asked.
He turned so blank a face to the expectant one he saw before him that
the seriousness could no longer be preserved. The vacuity turned into a
smile, and the smile into a broad grin.
"I guess I lose if I have to answer that question now," he admitted,
frankly; "but you keep your eye on Willie and the push-ball, and watch
the professor change him into a big roaring captain of industry. Then
you shall talk business with him as much as you like, and he won't make
you feel that he's laughing at you, as that Mr.--, what's his name,
does."
"Good for you, Allen!" the girl cried, really pleased by the clumsily
expressed compliment.
"So all is settled now except the pater, and I'm almost launched on my
career," Allen replied. "Now suppose we take up your case. What have you
been doing all these years?"
"Well," said Alice, smiling, "the history of my life is yet to be
written, but the main facts up to the present are that I have safely
passed through school and most of my other childhood diseases; that I
had my coming-out ball in New York last winter; that I am happy,
and--most important of all--that I have Eleanor."
She took Mrs. Gorham's hand affectionately in hers as she spoke, and
Allen needed nothing more to demonstrate the strength of the bond which
existed between the two. It was not the affection between mother and
daughters, or between sisters, or friends, but rather the best of all
three merged and purified by the yearning each had felt for that which
now each had found.
The conversation during the ride back to the hotel was in lighter vein,
in which Allen showed greater proficiency. Alice's interest in him was
mingled with a disappointment that the years had not made him older and
less irresponsible. She felt herself distinctly his senior, yet she also
felt a confidence in his unexpressed ability. To Mrs. Gorham the
passages-at-arms between the two children, as she would have called
them, were refreshing. She knew that each was being benefited by coming
in contact with a different nature. Alice's serious side needed the
leaven of a lighter viewpoint on life; Allen's buoyancy was already
being tempered by her ambition. This was why, when Alice asked her
later, in their apartment, "Don't you think Allen needs a little of that
'inspiration' you spoke of?" she had kissed the girl, and answered
without hesitation, "Yes, dear; and you are just the one to give it to
him."
"Then this is my chance to enter business by proxy?" Alice asked again;
and Mrs. Gorham, smiling quietly to herself, had answered, "Perhaps."