here and meet everybody.
And you spend my money like water."

"Somebody has got to spend it," spoke up the sole heir to the mustard
millions, cheerfully. "I'll tell you what I'll do, pater--you stop
making it and I'll stop spending it. That's a bargain. It'll be a
great lark for us both. It keeps me awake nights figuring out how I'm
going to spend it and it keeps you awake nights puzzling over how you
can make it--or, that is, make more of it."

"_Stop_!" thundered Joshua Barnes. "For once in my life, Whitney
Barnes, I am going to have a serious talk with you. If your poor
mother had only lived all this wouldn't have been necessary. She'd
have had you married off and there'd be a houseful of grand-children
by this time, and"----

"Just a moment, pater--did triplets or that sort of thing ever run in
our family?"

"Certainly not! What are you driving at?"

"Nothing; nothing, my father. Only I was just wondering. We have a
pretty big house, you know."

For a moment Joshua Barnes seemed on the verge of apoplexy, but he
came around quickly, and moreover with a twinkle in his eye. Even a
life devoted to mustard has its brighter side and Old Grim Barnes was
not entirely devoid of a sense of humor. He was his grim old self
again, however, when he resumed:

"Again I insist that you be serious. I intend that you shall be
married within a year. Otherwise I will put you to work on a salary of
ten dollars a week and compel you to live on it. If you persist in
refusing to interest yourself in my business, the business that my
grandfather founded and that my father and I built up, you can at
least settle down and lead a respectable married life.

"To be candid with you, Whitney," and Joshua Barnes's big voice
suddenly softened, "I want to see some little grand-children round me
before I die. I have some pride of blood, my boy, and I want to see
our name perpetuated. You have frivolled enough, Whitney. You are
twenty-four. I can honestly thank God that you've been nothing more
than a fool. You are not vicious."

"Thanks, awfully, pater. Being nothing more than a fool I suppose it
is up to me to get married. Very well, then, I will. Give me your
hand, dad; it's a bargain."

Whitney Barnes tossed away his cigarette and grasped his father's hand
in both of his. He had become intensely serious. There was a depth of
affection in that handclasp that neither father nor son permitted to
show above the surface. Yet both felt it ke