The reporter rose and looked straight into the unblinking eyes of the great financier. Then he said, slowly, and, the old fellow admitted, distinctly impressively:
"And I tell you, twice as quietly and ten times as calmly, without any fool threats, that all the daily newspapers in New York and Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and ten thousand other towns in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Canal Zone, and countries in the Postal Union, are going to publish articles about your son Tom's engagement, and later on about his marriage. Understand once for all, that there are some things all your millions and all your will-power cannot do. This is one of them. It is the penalty of being a public character--or, if you prefer, of being an exceptionally great man. Do I understand that you have nothing to say about your son's coming marriage?"
E. H. Merriwether in less than five seconds thought of more than five thousand possibilities, all in connection with his son's marriage. Then he said, very slowly, fighting for time and a chance to escape:
"My son will marry whenever he and the young lady chiefly interested judge fit to do so. He and I are in perfect accord, as always." Mr. Merriwether was looking into the too-fearless and too-intelligent gray-blue eyes of the reporter. Then he did what he did not often do in his Wall Street affrays--he capitulated. "Will you give me your word that you will not use for publication what I am about to tell you?"
"No, sir, I won't!" emphatically replied the reporter. "You might tell me something I already know and then you'd always think I had broken my word. I will not pledge myself not to print the name of your daughter-in-law-to-be; but anything that concerns you personally or your attitude toward your son's finacée, or hints of a family quarrel--or those things that offend a sensitive man--I promise not to print. You have some rights; but I also owe certain things to myself and my paper. I've been frank with you. You can be frank with me if you wish. I put it up to you."
Mr. Merriwether, after a thoughtful pause, said: "Look here! I don't know anything about my son's engagement. I cannot swear he is not engaged, but I don't know that he is. It follows that I do not know the young lady. You don't have to print that, do you?"