ade to feel that his maintenance was a burden
unjustly thrown on one who could ill afford to bear it. For this
consideration the son had been grateful ever since he knew its
character, and was now eager to make due return.

For the minute he was moving restlessly about the room, not knowing what
to say. From the way in which his father, who was comfortably stretched
in an arm-chair before the fire, dropped the evening paper to the floor,
while he puffed silently at his cigar, Thor knew that he was expected to
give some account of the interview between himself and the trustee that
afternoon. Any father might reasonably look for such a confidence, while
the conditions of affectionate intimacy in which the Masterman family
lived made it a matter of course.

The son was still marching up and down the room, smoking cigarettes
rapidly and throwing the butts into the fire, when he had completed his
summary of the information received in his two meetings with the
executor.

The father had neither interrupted nor asked questions, but he spoke at
last. "What did you say was the approximate value of the whole estate?"

Thor told him.

"And of the income?"

Thor repeated that also.

"Criminal."

Thor stopped dead for an instant, but resumed his march. He had stopped
in surprise, but he went on again so as to give the impression of not
having heard the last observation.

"It's criminal," the father explained, with repressed indignation, "that
money should bring in so trifling a return."

"He said it was very conservatively invested."

"It's damned idiotically invested. Such incompetence deserves an even
stronger term. If my own money didn't earn more for me than that--well,
I'm afraid you wouldn't have seen Vienna and Berlin."

The remark gave Thor an opening he was glad to seize. "I know that,
father. I know how much you've spent for me, and how generous you've
always been, with Claude to provide for, too; and now that I'm to have
enough of my own I want to repay you every--"

"Don't hurt me, my boy. You surely don't think I'd take compensation for
bringing up my own son. It's not in the least what I'm driving at. I
simply mean that now that the whole thing is coming into your own hands
you'll probably want to do better with it than has been done
heretofore."

Thor said nothing. There was a long silence before his father went on:

"Even if you didn't want _me_ to have anything to do with it, I could
put you in t