guished scholar, seemed far more likely to make a name than the undistinguished Gibbons. Changes. Changes.
"How old is the girl?" he demanded.
"Eighteen," said Unwin. "She wants to go to Smith."
"What about the boy?"
"He's a year younger. They tell me he's a genius mechanically. He yearns to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
"Nothing to it," said Gibbons scornfully. "If he had a yearning for business I might help. Let him think it over. What’s the girl doing?"
Radway's Stenographer
"She is one of Radway's stenographers. She has great opportunities there, but her heart isn't in the work."
"Radway!" Gibbons snapped. "That's a good way to recommend her to me. Radway is my open and avowed enemy." He frowned as he thought of it. Then he smiled almost amiably. "Private stenographer?" he asked. "Or just one of the bunch in the office?"
"Private," Unwin answered. "You see, she knows French and Spanish perfectly. Even Radway approves of her."
"She knows a lot about his private affairs, I suppose. I wondered how you learned of the Memphis and Toledo road. You got it from her. Look here, Tubby. Tell her the chances of bright women in business are enormous; they far exceed any jobs colleges offer. I may make a place for her in my organization if she is as bright as you say. Tell her to leave Radway and come to me."
"What about the boy?" Bettington asked.
"I'll attend to that later. I'll begin with the girl. Send her to see me tomorrow. If she's bright she'll make more money than her father."
"This is one of the times I wish I had taken to commerce instead of art," Bettington commented. He had every sympathy with a girl who wanted more education; apparently Gibbons had none.
"You'd have failed at it," Gibbons retorted. "Men of your kind always seem to think any fool can make a success of business and get where I am. I'm the sort who wins.
"Where would you be in a situation where supreme courage and resolution were required? I'll answer. You'd be found wanting. You've lived a remote life. If you haven't liked a place or a climate you've gone somewhere else, looked for something easier."
Bettington smiled a little. Gibbons's outbreak seemed to amuse him.
"I don't know," he said. "I've been in some tight places in far corners of the earth and I have not always lost. After all, Gibbons, what do you know of me or Unwin?"
"I know," said the capitalist hotly, "that one seeks the security of a trumpery job and the comfort of a pitiful pay envelope, and the other gets out of the fight by daubing canvases." His manner became less bellicose. "Don't forget to send the girl around. I'll see that she is sent right into my private office and that's a privilege some would pay high for."
His guests understood that the audience was over. Alfred Gibbons had no more interest in them. In a sense, they were dismissed.
CHAPTER III
Planning the Cruise
"THE place stifled me," said Unwin, when he was alone in the street with Bettington. "I was conscious of high blood pressure. The physical symptoms alarmed me. My clothes felt like constricting armor."
"Walk as far as my studio," Bettington suggested. "Isn't it strange that we should have lost sight of one another. I feel guilty. Here I have been wandering around the globe and
