might aid in
straightening the boy out.

"Well, try it for a year," his father said, not unkindly, and almost
wistfully.

VI

When Johnny McComas heard of Raymond's resolve, he drew up his round
face into a grimace. He thought the step queer, and he said so. But,
"Oh, well, if a fellow can afford it!" he added. And he did not explain
just what meaning he attached to the word "afford."

But Johnny could see no valid reason for a fellow's giving the town the
go-by at nineteen and at just that stage of the town's development.
Johnny was so made that the community which housed him was necessarily
the centre of the cosmos; he himself, howsoever placed, was necessarily
at the centre of the circle--so why leave the central dot for some vague
situation on the circumference? And take this particular town: what a
present! what a future! what a wide extension over the limitless prairie
with every passing month!--a prairie which merely needed to be cut up
into small checkers and sold to hopeful newcomers; a prairie which
produced profits as freely as it produced goldenrod and asters; a
prairie upon which home-seekers might settle down under agents whose
wide range, running from helpful cooeperation to absolute flimflam, need
leave no competent "operator" other than rich.

"What are you going to get out of it?" asked Johnny earnestly.

Raymond attempted no set reply. Johnny, he recognized, was out for
positive results, for tangible returns; his idea was to get on in the
world by definite and unmistakable stages. Raymond never welcomed the
idea of "getting on"--not at least in the sense in which his own day and
place used the expression. To do so was but to acknowledge some early
inferiority. Raymond was not conscious of any inferiority to be
overcome. Johnny might, of course, on this particular point, feel as he
chose.

About this time old Jehiel Prince began to come more frequently to his
son's house. He was yellower and grayer, and he was getting testy and
irascible. He sometimes brought his lawyer with him, and the pair made
James Prince an active participant in their concerns. However, Jehiel
was perhaps less unhappy here than in his own home. When there, he sat
moodily alone, of evenings, in his basement office; and Raymond, who was
sometimes sent over with documents or with messages, impatiently
reported him to me as "glum."

"Poor old fellow! he doesn't know how to live!" said Raymond in
complacent pity. He himse