igured he must have forgot
somethin'. Business--well, he called advertisin' a rich man's luxury,
and said an audit was an insult to his partners. Said he'd welcome a
sheriff sooner'n he would an expert accountant--and in the long
run, that's exactly what he _did_. Involuntary bankruptcy--found
his sanctimonious old cashier'd been sanctimoniously lootin' the
till for eighteen years." He paused, and eyed his cigar. "Well,
Mirabelle's cut more or less off the same piece. Lord, I wish _she_
could go through some kind of bankruptcy, if 't would shake her up
like it did father."

"It--shook him up, did it?" inquired Henry, fidgeting.

"Well," said his uncle, "after the crash, I don't recollect he ever
mentioned the good old times again except once; and that was to praise
the good old habit of takin' defaulters and boilin' 'em in oil. No,
sir, he wouldn't so much as add two and two together without an addin'
machine, and he used to make an inventory of his shirts and winter
flannels pretty near every week. And Mirabelle's the same way; she's
still tryin' to live under the 1874 rules." He came back to his desk,
and sat down thoughtfully. "Well, she's been talkin' to me ever since
you went off on this party and as far's most of it's concerned, I'm
not on _her_ side, and I'm not on _your_ side; I'm sort of betwixt and
between." He looked sidewise at Henry, and discovered that Henry was
peering off into space, and smiling as though he saw a vision in the
clouds. "Just as man to man, just for the information; suppose you
passed up everything I've said to you, and went and got married one of
these days--did you expect I'd go on supportin' you?"

Henry came down to earth, and his expression showed that he had landed
heavily. "Why--what was that?"

His uncle repeated it, with a postscript. "Oh, I've always told you
you could have anything you wanted within reason that I could pay for.
But from what I been told"--his eyes twinkled--"wives ain't always
reasonable. And it does seem to me that when a young man gets to be
twenty five or six, and never did a lick of work in his life, and
loafs around clubs and plays polo just because he's got a rich uncle,
why, it's a sort of a reflection on both of 'em. Seem so to you?"

Henry glanced up nervously and down again. "To tell the truth, I
hadn't thought much about it."

"Say," said his uncle, confidentially. "Neither had I. Not 'till
Mirabelle told me you went off on this party because