F MR. HORATIO BARING hadn't got out of the wrong side of bed that morning—subsequent to crawling into it on the same side the night before—the attitude of his first visitor and client would certainly have charmed him and renewed his confidence in the administration. The client was valiantly optimistic in a bear market. He said that the country was on the verge of prosperity which would set Henry Ford back to a rating of second credit and place the Bread Line on a level with the Draft Riots as an unpleasant fact in ancient history; and he declared further, as collateral evidence, that at the present state of affairs the bonds of Quito Copper at ll2 were even as money found on the sidewalk, shouting for help. Since Mr. Baring knew personally the members of the firm which was floating those highly speculative bonds, and knew that just at this moment ll0¼ and an oath of reciprocation were sufficient to bring them promptly across the counter to a friend like himself, there was apparently little reason for restraint. Nothing in the code of ethics of the Stock Exchange prevented him from smiling and bringing out the cigars and excusing himself to speak in a hushed voice over the wire.
But the smile of Mr. Baring had congealed since yesterday under the weathering of his frosty thought. This morning he regarded the world in his capacity of parent rather than that of banker; and as a parent he cherished a soul in revolt, and it hurt him.
For a synopsis: There was a certain young man who, in the early winter, had once taken the most accommodating of all trains from New York to call upon Miss Margaret Baring in the suburbs; and on that first occasion the parent had said: "Kenyon? Harry Kenyon? Why, we do a lot of business with his house, but he's a man I don't admire ... he doesn't seem to have any sense of responsibility. Plays golf on week days ... golf! Met him at a dance, I suppose?... Well, I should say a dancing broker is just about the sort of man I'd expect to play golf, come to think of it!"
The third time he had laughed shortly and said: "Kenyon again? What's he done—bought a commutation ticket? I tell you, a man who wastes the time he does couldn't get a job in my office! Crack amateur golfer!... A crack amateur golfer belongs in a golf club!... I want to do business with crack professional bankers!"
And the sixth time he had said : "What's he hanging around here for? Hasn't he any home?"
And last night he had stated flatly, and without the tact you might expect from one who lived on commissions: "Look here, Peggy, this thing has got to stop!" To which Miss Baring had rejoined gently: "I'm sorry if you don't like Harry, father ... it's too bad, because I think we're going to be married before so very long."
He had stared at her in a species of icy indignation which astonished them equally. His daughter! ... the daughter he had intended some time—oh, so very some time!—to marry a conservative, well-established, reputable member of the board, spoke mutinously and ever so ingenuously of allying herself with a wild Harvard graduate who still drew a salary and played good golf—tacit evidence of a misspent youth!
"Do you take me for an idiot!" he had gasped.
"Well," said Peggy, "I don't see what that has to do with it—"
So for two awful hours they had interrupted each other and dispatched hundreds of trains of thought which never reached their destination, and exchanged views on young men who slight commerce in favor of sport, and on middle-aged men who don't appreciate sport because they were grandfathers in temperament when they were born; and Mr. Baring had said that if Peggy truly loved him, she'd forget this cub who wasn't worthy of her; and Peggy had said in rebuttal that if Mr. Baring truly loved her, he wouldn't stand in the way of her happiness; and then they had kissed and inquired in the same breath if the other were convinced. It was about as conclusive as an argument between a suffragist and an anti—except that there was no tea.
Mr. Baring went to bed with a headache, indigestion, and the lassitude of anemia; and spent the major part of the night in wondering, in the manner of fathers taken by surprise in the presence of individuality, if Peggy would have been more docile if she had been spanked oftener when she was young.
So that even the potentiality of nearly two per cent for merely telephoning around the corner couldn't make Mr. Baring smile.
"If you can get 'em by eleven o'clock at ll2 or below," said the improvident client, lighting one of his own cigars, "I'll take twenty-five—and if you can shade three-quarters, I'll take twenty thousand more for my wife."