high school in June. Plans for the boy's future were fixed as far as Henry Lamb was concerned. He had ventured to approach Peter Thatcher, his brother-in-law regarding his son several months previously on the occasion of a trip to Cleveland. Peter, the steel magnate, had good-naturedly agreed to start Harold at the bottom in his foundry and give him a chance to make good. Henry Lamb thought this a very generous concession and a marvelous opportunity for his son. The older Lamb declined to be moved in the slightest by Harold's protests and by the boy's foolish ideas about going to college. Look at Uncle Peter! He had started as a water boy in a steel plant, and now he owned the business! One of the leading steel magnates of the country. Director in several banks. A leading citizen.
As June arrived, however, word came from Uncle Peter that business was in a slump, men were being laid off by the wholesale and he would be unable to use his nephew's services before the first of August at the earliest. This annoyed Henry Lamb only temporarily. He girded up his courage, approached Walter Coburn, president of the First National Bank of Sanford (where Henry was the oldest bookkeeper) and gained the boon of a minor clerkship for Harold during the Summer.
