Ben?" he enquired, with a chuckle.

I shook my head. "Not yet, but it's a fair risk and a good chance to
make a big business."

"Well, you're right, I suppose, and if you ain't you'll find out before
long. What's luck, after all, but the thing that enables a man to see a
long way ahead?"

He settled himself under his fur rug, flicked the reins over the old
grey horse, and we drove slowly up Main Street behind a street car.

"I don't know about luck, General, but I'm going to win out if hard
pushing can do it."

"It can do 'most anything if you only push hard, enough. But you talk as
if you were in love, Ben, I've said the same thing a hundred times in my
day, I reckon."

I blushed furiously, and then turning my face from him, stared at a
group of children upon the sidewalk.

"Whom could I marry, General?" I asked. "You know well enough that a
woman in your class wouldn't marry a man in mine--unless--"

"Unless she were over head and heels in love with him," he chuckled.

"Unless he were a great man," I corrected.

"You mean a rich man, Ben? So your oil business is merely a little love
attention, after all."

"No, money has very little to do with it, and the woman I want to marry
wouldn't marry me for money. But it's the mettle that counts, and in
this age, given the position I've started from, how can a man prove his
mettle except by success?--and success does mean money. The president of
the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad is obliged to be a rich
man, isn't he?"

"So you're still after my job, eh? Is that why you've let me bully and
badger you for the last six years?"

"It was at the bottom of it," I answered honestly, for the gay old bird
liked downright speaking, and I knew it. "I'd rather have been your
confidential secretary for six years than general manager of traffic. I
was learning what I wanted to know."

"And what was that?"

"The way you did things. The way you handled men and bought and sold
stocks."

"You like the road, too, eh?"

"I like the road as long as it can be of use to me."

"And when it ceases to be you'll throw it over?"

"Yes, if it ever ceases to be I'll throw it over--honestly," I answered.

"Now that's the thing," he said, "remember always that in handling men
honesty is a big asset. I've always been honest, my boy, and it's helped
me when I needed it. Why, when I came in and got control of the road in
that slump after the war, I was able to reorganise it