"Mr. Transley seems to have made a hit with you, Dad," she remarked,
evasively.

"Well, I do like to see a man who's got the goods in him. I like a man
that can get there, just as I like a horse that can get there. I've
often wondered, Zen, what kind you'd take up with, when it came to that,
an' hoped he'd be a live crittur. After I'm dead an' buried I don't want
no other dead one spendin' my simoleons."

"How about Mr. Linder?" said Zen, naively.

Her father looked up sharply. "Zen," he said, "you're not serious?"

Zen laughed. "I don't figure you're exactly serious, Dad, in your
talk about Transley. You're just feeling out. Well--let me do a little
feeling out. How about Linder?"

"Linder's all right," Y.D. replied. "Better than the average, I admit.
But he's not the man Transley is. If he was, he wouldn't be workin' for
Transley. You can't keep a man down, Zen, if he's got the goods in him.
Linder comes up over the average, so's you can notice it, but not like
Transley does."

Zen did not pursue the subject. She understood her father's philosophy
very well indeed, and, to a large degree, she accepted it as her own. It
was natural that a man of Y.D.'s experience, who had begun life with
no favors and had asked none since, and had made of himself a big
success--it was natural that such a man should judge all others by their
material achievements. The only quality Y.D. took off his hat to was the
ability to do things. And Y.D.'s idea of things was very concrete; it