'd lived abroad too. Studied music
there. Not that he ever meant to work at it, but just because he liked
it. You see, about that time the fam'ly income was rollin' in reg'lar
every month from the mills back in Pawtucket, or Fall River, or
somewhere.

Then all of a sudden things begin to happen,--strikes, panics, stock
grabbin' by the trusts. Father's weak heart couldn't stand the strain.
Meredith's mother followed soon after. And one rainy mornin' he wakes
up in Baden Baden, or Monte Carlo, or wherever it was, to find that
he's a double orphan at the age of twenty-two, with no home, no cash,
and no trade. All he could do was to write an S. O. S. message back to
Aunt Emma Jane. If she hadn't produced, he'd been there yet.

But Aunty got him out of pawn. Panics and so on hadn't cleaned out her
share of the Stidler estate--not so you'd notice it! She'd been on the
spot, Aunt Emma had, watchin' the market. Long before the jinx hit
Wall Street she'd cashed in her mill stock for gold ballast, and when
property prices started tumblin' she dug up a lard pail from under the
syringa bush and begun investin' in bargain counter real estate. Now
she owns business blocks, villa plots, and shore frontage in big
chunks, and spends her time collectin' rents, makin' new deals, and
swearin' off her taxes.

You'd most thought, with a perfectly good nephew to blow in some of her
surplus on, she'd made a fam'ly pet of J. Meredith. But not her. Pets
wasn't in her line. Her prescription for him was work, something
reg'lar and constant, so he wouldn't get into mischief. She didn't
care what it brought in, so long as he kept himself in clothes and
spendin' money. And that was about Merry's measure. He could add up a
column of figures and put the sum down neat at the bottom of the page.
So he fitted into our audit department like a nickel into a slot
machine. And there he stuck.

"But after sportin' around Europe so long," says I, "don't punchin' the
time clock come kind of tough?"

"It's a horrible, dull grind," says he. "Like being caught in a
treadmill. But I suppose I deserve nothing better. I'm one of the
useless sort, you know. I've no liking, no ability, for business; but
I'm in the mill, and I can't see any way out."

For a second J. Meredith's voice sounds hopeless. One look ahead has
taken out of him what little pep he had. But the next minute he braces
up, smiles weary, and remarks, "Oh, well! What's th