"I am greatly obliged to you for coming," she began, "for I know how busy you are, but I have a question to ask of you which I feel sure you can answer better than anyone I know. It is about my son Oliver. I am going to be perfectly frank with you, and I want you to be equally frank with me."
And she summed up Oliver's aims, temptations, and failings with a skill that gained the Vermonter's closest attention. "With all this," she continued, "he is affectionate, loves me dearly, and has never disobeyed me in his life. It is his love of change that worries me--his instability--one thing one moment, and another the next. It seems to me the only way to break this up is to throw him completely on his own resources so that he may realize for once what life really means. Now tell me--" and she looked searchingly into Cobb's face, as if eager to note the effect of her question--"if he were your only son, would you, in view of all I have told you, send him to New York to make his start in life, or would you keep him here?"
The Vermonter's face had begun to lighten as she progressed, and had entirely cleared when he learned why he had been sent for. He had been afraid, when he received her note, that it had been about the mortgage.
Cobb was chairman of the Loan Committee at the bank, had personally called attention to Richard's note being overdue, and had himself ordered its payment.
"My two boys are at school in Vermont, Madam," he answered, slowly.
"But Oliver must earn his own living," she said, earnestly. "His father will have nothing to give him."
Cobb made no reply. He was not surprised. Most all of these aristocratic Southerners were on their last legs. He was right about the note, he said to himself --it was just as well to have it paid--and he made a mental memorandum to inquire about it as soon as he reached his office, and have it pressed for settlement at once. Business matters must be kept intact.
"What do you want him to do, Madam?" he asked, looking at her keenly from under his bushy eyebrows.
"Anything to earn his bread," she replied, in a decided tone.
Cobb passed his hand over his face, pinched his chin with his thumb and forefinger, and looked out of the window. The answer pleased him. It pleased him, too, to be consulted by the Horns on a matter of this kind. It pleased him most of all to realize that when these aristocrats who differed with him politically got into a financial hole they had to send for him to help pull them out.
For a moment the Vermonter remained in deep thought. "Here is a Southern woman," he said to himself, "with some common-sense and with a head on her shoulders. If her husband had half her brains I'd let the mortgage stand." Then he turned and faced her squarely, his eyes boring into hers.
"Send him to New York, by all means, Madam, or anywhere else out of here," he said, firmly, but with a kindly tone in his voice. "When you decide, let me know--I will give him a letter to a business friend of mine who lives on the Hudson, a short distance above the city, who may help him. But let me advise you to send him at once. I saw your son yesterday at the club, and he exactly fits your measure, except in one respect. He's got more grit in him than you give him credit for. I looked him over pretty carefully, and if he gets in a tight place you needn't worry about him. He'll pull out, or my name isn't Cobb. And now one thing more--" and he rose stiffly from the sofa and buttoned up his coat--"don't give him any pocket-money. Chuck him out neck and heels into the world and let him shift for himself. That's the way I was treated, and that's the way I got on. Good-day."
