attained nearer to friendship with Richard Bransby than did any one else but Latham.

For Grant nothing was relaxed. He was dealt with as crisply and treated as drastically as any office boy of the unconsidered and driven all. Bransby’s to order; Grant’s to obey. But, for all that, the employer felt some hidden, embryonic kindliness for the employee. And the clerk was devoted to the master: accepted the latter’s tyranny almost cordially, and resented it not even at heart or unconsciously.

The two men had been born within a few doors of each other on the same long, dull street. That was a link.

Grant cherished and doted on the business of which he was but a servant as much as Bransby did—not more, because more was an impossibility. He rose for it in the morning. He lay down for it at night. He rested—so far as he did rest—on the Sabbath and on perforced holidays for it. He ate for it. He dressed for it. He went to Margate once a year, second class, for it. That was a link.

Unless it involves some form of rivalry—as cricket, competitive business, acting, popular letters, desire for the same woman, two men cannot live for the selfsame thing without it in some measure breeding in them some tinge of mutual liking.

And these two reserved, uncommunicative men had loved the same woman, and contrary to rule, that too was a link—perhaps the strongest of the three—though Bransby had never even remotely suspected it.

Morton Grant could not remember when he had not loved Violet Bransby. He had yearned for her when they both wore curls and very short dresses. He had loved her when, short-sighted and round-shouldered then as now, he had been in her class at dancing school and in the adjacent class at the Sunday School, in which the pupils, aged from four to fourteen, had been decently and discreetly segregated of sex. He had loved her on her wedding-day, and wept the hard scant tears of manhood defeated, denied and at bay, until his dull, weak eyes had been bleared and red-rimmed, and his ugly little button of a nose (he had almost none) had flamed gin-scarlet. And for that one day the beloved business had been to him nothing. He had loved her when she lay shrouded in her coffin—and now, a year after, he loved her dust in its grave—and all so silently that even she had never sensed it. For the old saying is untrue: a woman does not always know.

This poor love of his was indeed a link between the man and his master—and all the stronger because Richard had been as suspicionless as Violet herself. For Bransby would have resented it haughtily, but less and less hotly than he had resented her marriage with that “mountebank” (the term is Bransby’s and not altogether just)—but of the two he would greatly have preferred Grant as a brother-in-law.

Under Helen’s sway, Grant had never come. She was not Violet’s child. He would rather even that Bransby were childless and his fortune in entire keeping for Violet’s boys. For herself he neither liked nor disliked the little girl. But he was grateful to her for being a girl. That left the business undividedly open for Stephen and Hugh—for their future participation and ultimate management at least. And he hoped that of so large a fortune an uncle so generous to them, and so fond of Violet, would allot the brothers some considerable share.

Unlike Mr. Dombey and many other self-made millionaires, Richard Bransby had never wished for a son. Not for treble his millions would he have changed her of sex: Helen satisfied him—quite.

And perhaps unconsciously he was some trifle relieved that no son, growing up to man’s assertion, could rival or question his sole headship of “Bransby’s.”

CHAPTER IV

As Helen and Hugh came singing up the path, Bransby was driving Grant from the door. It was no friendliness that had led him to speed his visitor so far, but a desire to see if Helen were not coming. The sun was setting, and the father thought it high time she came indoors.

Grant was in disgrace. He had come unbidden, forbidden, in fact—and so unwelcome.

Advised by Latham (still a youthful, but daily growing famous physician) and enforced by his own judgment, Bransby was taking a short holiday. Thorough in all things, the merchant had abandoned his business affairs and their conduct entirely—for the moment. Grant had been ordered to manage and decide everything unaided until the master’s return, and by no means to intrude by so much as a letter or a telegram.

He had disobeyed.

That it was the first turpitude of thirty years of implicit, almost craven, fealty in no way tempered its enormity. “Preposterous!” had been Bransby’s greeting. “Preposterous,” was his good-by.

Something had gone wrong at the office, or threatened to go wrong, so important that the faithful old dog had felt obliged to come for his master’s personal and immediate decision. But he had come trembling. For his pains he had had abuse and reprimand. But he had gained his point. He had got his message through, and learned Bransby’s will. And he was going away—back to his loved drudgery, not trembling, but alert and reassured.

And though Bransby abused, secretly he approved. The link was strengthened.

Bransby was angry—but also he was flattered. He was not, concerning his business at least, and a few other things, altogether above flattery. Who is? Are you?

In his quaint way he had some interior warm liking for his commonplace factotum. He trusted him unreservedly; and trust begets liking more surely and more quickly than pity begets love. After Horace Latham, Morton Grant stood to Bransby for all of human friendship and of living comradeship.

Bransby had adopted Violet’s boys, out of love for her and out of a nepotism that was conscience rather than instinct—and, too, it was pride.

They had been with him nearly a year now, and because he counted them as one of his assets, possible appanages of his great business—and because of their daily companionship with Helen—he watched them keenly. He did not suspect it, as yet, but both little fellows were creeping slowly into a corner of the heart that still beat true enough and human under his surface of granite and steel. And Stephen began to interest him much. Indisputably Stephen Pryde was interesting. He had personality beyond Nature’s average dole to each individual of that priceless though dangerous quality. And the personality of the boy, in its young way, had no slight resemblance to that of the uncle. Stephen was an eccentric in-the-making, Richard an eccentric made and polished. Each hid his eccentricity under intense reserve and a steely suavity of bearing. That this should be so in the experienced man of fifty, disciplined by time, by experience and by personal intention, was natural, and not unusual in such types. That it was so in the small boy untried and untutored was extraordinary—it spoke much of force and presaged of his future large things good or bad, whichever might eventuate, and one probably as apt to eventuate as the other, and, whichever came, to come in no small degree. And truly the lad had force even now: perhaps it was his most salient quality, and stood to him for that useful gift—magnetism—which he somewhat lacked.

As Grant went out the two children came in. Helen took her father’s hand, and led him back to the room he had just left—and Hugh followed her doglike. The word is used in no abject sense, but in its noblest.

“Ring the bell,” Richard said to the boy, sitting down in the big chair