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tomobile of an atrocious red color which was standing at the curb, and in this we were presently hurled through the crowded middle city to the lower part of the town, which, it is unnecessary for me to say, I cordially detested, and brought up before a building, the entire lower floor of which was given over to the opulent offices of Ballard, Wrenn and Halloway. Ballard the elder was tall like his son, but here the resemblance ceased, for while Ballard the younger was round of visage and jovial, the banker was thin of face and repressive. He had a long, accipitrine nose which imbedded itself in his bristling white mustache, and he spoke in crisp staccato notes as though each intonation and breath were carefully measured by their monetary value. He paid out to me in cash a half an hour, during which he questioned and I replied while Jack grinned in the background. And at the end of that period of time the banker rose and dismissed me with much the air of one who has perused a document and filed it in the predestined pigeonhole. I felt that I had been rubber-stamped, docketed and passed into oblivion. What he actually said was: "Thanks, I'll write. Good afternoon." The vision of the Great Experiment which had been flitting in rose-color before my eyes, was as dim as the outer corridor where I was suddenly aware of Jack Ballard's voice at my ear and his friendly clutch upon my elbow. "You'll do," he laughed. "I was positive of it." "I can't imagine how you reach that conclusion," I put in rather tartly, still reminiscent of the rubber stamp. "Oh," he said, his eye twinkling, "simplest thing in the world. The governor's rather brief with those he doesn't like." "Brief! I feel as though I'd just emerged from a glacial douche." "Oh, he's nippy. But he never misses a trick, and he got your number all O.K." As we reached the street I took his hand. "Thanks, Ballard," I said warmly. "It's been fine of you, but I'm sorry that I can't share your hopes." "Rot! The thing's as good as done. There's another executor or two to be consulted, but they'll be glad enough to take the governor's judgment. You'll hear from him tomorrow. In the meanwhile," and he thrust a paper into my hands, "read this. It's interesting. It's John Benham's brief for masculine purity with a few remarks (not taken from Hegel) upon the education and training of the child." We had reached the corner of the street when he stopped and too
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