"Now you can go on from here," said Cheyne, slowly, "costing me between six or eight thousand a year till you're a voter. Well, we'll call you a man then. You can go right on from that, living on me to the tune of forty or fifty thousand, besides what your mother will give you, with a valet and a yacht or a fancy-ranch where you can pretend to raise trotting stock and play cards with your own crowd."
"Yep; or the two De Vitré boys or old man McQuade's son. California's full of 'em, and here's an Eastern sample while we're talking."
A shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house, nickel-plated binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings, puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some New York club. Two young men, in what they conceived to be sea costumes, were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily.
"Shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. No, beam," said Harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her mooring-buoy.
"They're having what stands them for a good time. I can give you that, and twice as much as that, Harve. How'd you like it?"
"Caesar! That's no way to get a dinghy over-side," said Harvey, still intent on the yacht. "If I couldn't slip a tackle better than that I'd stay ashore. . . . What if I don't?"
"Yacht and ranch and live on 'the old man,' and--get behind mama when there's trouble," said Harvey, with a twinkle in his eye.
"Why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son."
"Not a cent more until you're worth it, and you won't begin to touch that for a few years."
"I'd sooner begin sweeping out the office--isn't that how the big bugs start?--and touch something now than--"
"I know it; we all feel that way. But I guess we can hire any sweeping we need. I made the same mistake myself of starting in too soon."
"Thirty million dollars' worth o' mistake, wasn't it? I'd risk it for that."
"I lost some; and I gained some. I'll tell you."
Cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water, and spoke away from Harvey, who presently began to be aware that his father was telling the story of his life. He talked in a low, even voice, without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully have paid many dollars--the story of forty years that was at the same time the story of the New West, whose story is yet to be written.