"Yes, yes, mamma, but . . ."
"Oh, Ward," her arms around him, "you will be so sorry in a few years!"
Ward squirmed. He hated to hurt her feelings, but he hated heroics and babyfying too.
She took her hands from him quickly. "All right, son. I know you must work out your own life sooner or later. I just hoped it would be a little later, that's all. Good luck to you." The brave smile she gave him had more than usual of its heart-breaking sweetness. It was harder than cutting his curls had been, or Edith's first day at school.
By the time Ward's friends were getting off to college he was thoroughly restless again. "I'm not going to be satisfied with a desk or counter. But I'm ignorant. The call is for trained men. All the same I'm fitter than the other fellows just from being out, and I'm hungrier, and more mature at it. So I can almost catch up in a year or two if you'll give me a good coach," he argued, eagerly.
"What do you want to do, then?" John asked, so gravely that Marcia grew anxious.
"I don't know exactly, but five or six years of general study . . ."
"No," said John. At the tone Ward stiffened; he knew the finality of his father's rare authority. "When you know your own mind I'll help you. That's the first trouble you've got to correct. Knowing what you don't want is too easy. You didn't like the office because it was dull. When I put you out, you didn't like the sort of people you had to rub up against. You never did anything at school. You like books now only to read them," Ward caught his mother's eyes, and humor betrayed her before she could get to cover. She could only hope the children would judge their father by the balanced standard she had learned. "Three years ago nothing would do but business."
"I should never have been allowed to stop!"
"Oh, son!" Marcia reminded him. "You would have called that tyranny. And your father thought you might be right."
"Then you have both done me wrong." The heat and single eye of youth. "Now I'm all out of it. Haven't a decent start even. How should I know what I'm for? And Edith—Edith is to have college."
"Edith is conscientious about everything and always does creditably, though she's not so bookish either," his father explained, patiently. But Ward was gone.
Marcia's big eyes were on her husband, but she knew I-told-you-so was a word obsolete in any standard domestic dictionary. John shook his head at her, smiling, sorry. "But there is justice in what he says," she began. "Please!" His hand had closed over the light fingers on his arm.
"No, dear, you please." His manner was apology, decision. "You don't understand. I have been afraid of this for some time. The boy is variable, Marcia, and he doesn't like work."
"He just hasn't found his line yet."
"Oh, there's too much of this new talk about specialties. It's all right for genius, perhaps. But a man with the intelligence and energy to do one thing well, can do several; and he'll never do anything at all unless he has at bottom a love of work for itself that makes him take hold of whatever comes up."
"But it isn't so necessary for him to make money, is it? Unless that is what he most wants, or is the game he most likes, like you. We . . ."
"He mustn't count on us. He must stand on his own feet. It is necessary for him to be a man, to succeed. I'm afraid he's been a mother's boy too long, and that I've shirked some of my duty on you. He needs hardening."
"But this is cruel, John."
"So is an operation. Now, Little Mother, don't fret. For every dollar that goes to Edith another shall be put by for Ward when he can be trusted with it. You'll say I'm right some day."
Marcia shook her head. But what was the use of arguing when it was simply an honest difference of opinion, with reasons on both sides? When John, who had the non-interference of large natures, did put a hand on things, it was a controlling grip. And she had once secretly thought him good but a little dull! He was dull only in her lines. But that was the trouble. If the marriage of likes may lead to ruts, the marriage of unlikes not only involves less union, but the children
