you came I thought I would have my reward in you. I have not only never
stinted you, but I have lavished money on you as if I was the richest
man in New York. I wanted you to have advantages that I never had: as
good as Norman Wentworth or any one else. I have given you things, and
seen you throw them away, that I would have crawled on my knees from my
old home to this office to get when I was a boy. And I thought you were
going to be my pride and my stay and my reward. And you said you were
doing it, and your mother and I had staked our hearts on you. And all
the time you were running away and lying to me and to her, and not doing
one honest lick of work."

The young man interrupted him. "That is not so," he said surlily.

His father pulled out a drawer and took from it a letter. Spreading it
open on his desk, he laid the palm of his open hand on it. "Not so? I
have got the proof of it here." He looked at the young man with level
eyes, eyes in which was such a cold gleam that Ferdy's gaze fell.

"I did not expect you to do it for _me_," Aaron Wickersham went on
slowly, never taking his eyes from his son's face, "for I had discovered
that you did not care a button for my wishes; but I did think you would
do it for your mother. For she thought you were a god and worshipped
you. She has been talking for ten years of the time when she would go to
see you come out at the head of your class. She was going to Paris to
get the clothes to wear if you won, and you--" His voice broke--"you
won't even graduate! What will you think next summer when Mrs. Wentworth
is there to see her son, and all the other men and women I know who have
sons who graduate there, and your mother--?" The father's voice broke
completely, and he looked away. Even Ferdy for a moment seemed grave and
regretful. Then after a glance at his father he recovered his composure.