"You will see Jack for yourself. He
is coming."

In the full enjoyment of health, observing every nice rule for
longevity, his slumber sweet, his appetite good, John Wingfield, Sr.
had less interest in John Wingfield, Jr. than he had when his bones
were aching with the grip. Jack's telegram from Chicago announcing the
train by which he would arrive aroused an old resentment, which dated
far back to Jack's childhood and to a frail woman who had been proof
against her husband's will.

Did this home-coming mean a son who could learn the business; a strong,
shrewd, cool-headed son? A son who could be such an adjutant as only one
who is of your own flesh and blood can be in the full pursuit of the same
family interest as yourself? If Jack were well, would not Bennington have
said so? Would he not have emphasized it? This was human nature as John
Wingfield, Sr. knew it; human nature which never missed a chance to
ingratiate itself by announcing success in the service of a man of power.

The spirit of his farewell message to Jack, which said that strength
might return but bade weakness to remain away, and the injured pride of
seeing a presentment of wounded egoism in the features of a sickly boy,
which had kept him from going to Arizona, were again dominant. Yet that
morning he had a pressing sense of distraction. Even Mortimer noticed it
as something unusual and amazing. He kept reverting to Jack's history
between flashes of apprehension and he was angry with himself over his
inability to concentrate his mind. Concentration was his god. He could
turn from lace-buyer to floor-walker with the quickness of the swing of
an electric switch. Concentrate and he was oblivious to everything but
the subject in hand. He was in one of the moments of apprehension, half
staring at the buttons on the desk rather than at the papers, when he
heard the door open without warning and looked up to see a lean, sturdy
height filling the doorway and the light from the window full on a
bronzed and serene face.

More than ever was Jack like David come over the hills in his incarnation
of sleeping energy. Instead of a sling he carried the rose. Into the
abode of the nicely governed rules of longevity came the atmosphere of
some invasive spirit that would make the stake of life the foam on the
crest of a charge in a splendid moment; the spirit of Senor Don't Care
pausing inquiringly, almost apologetically, as some soldier in dusty
khaki might if he