son's reasoning, he answered that when he himself had paid
Rouzeau's widow he had not had a penny left. If he, a poor, ignorant
working man, had made his way, Didot's apprentice should do still
better. Besides, had not David been earning money, thanks to an
education paid for by the sweat of his old father's brow? Now surely
was the time when the education would come in useful.

"What have you done with your 'polls?'" he asked, returning to the
charge. He meant to have light on a problem which his son left
unresolved the day before.

"Why, had I not to live?" David asked indignantly, "and books to buy
besides?"

"Oh! you bought books, did you? You will make a poor man of business.
A man that buys books is hardly fit to print them," retorted the
"bear."

Then David endured the most painful of humiliations--the sense of
shame for a parent; there was nothing for it but to be passive while
his father poured out a flood of reasons--sordid, whining,
contemptible, money-getting reasons--in which the niggardly old man
wrapped his refusal. David crushed down his pain into the depths of
his soul; he saw that he was alone; saw that he had no one to look to
but himself; saw, too, that his father was trying to make money out of
him; and in a spirit of philosophical curiosity, he tried to find out
how far the old man would go. He called old Sechard's attention to the
fact that he had never as yet made any inquiry as to his mother's
fortune; if that fortune would not buy the printing-house, it might go
some ways towards paying the working expenses.

"Your mother's fortune?" echoed old Sechard; "why, it was her beauty
and intelligence!"

David understood his father thoroughly after that answer; he
understood that only after an interminable, expensive, and disgraceful
lawsuit could he obtain any account of the money which by rights was
his. The noble heart accepted the heavy burden laid upon it, seeing
clearly beforehand how difficult it would be to free himself from the
engagements into which he had entered with his father.

"I will work," he said to himself. "After all, if I have a rough time
of it, so had the old man; besides, I shall be working for myself,
shall I not?"

"I am leaving you a treasure," said Sechard, uneasy at his son's
silence.

David asked what the treasure might be.

"Marion!" said his father.

Marion, a big country girl, was an indispensable part of the
establishment. It was Marion who damped the