I’m one of the crowd now. Disko has told everyone I’ve earned my pay.” Harvey spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together. “They’re all soft again,” he said dolefully.
“Keep ’em that way for the next few years, while you’re getting your education. You can harden ’em up after.”
“Ye‑es, I suppose so,” was the reply, in no delighted voice.
“It rests with you, Harve. You can take cover behind your mama, of course, and put her on to fussing about your nerves and your high-strungness and all that kind of poppycock.”
“Have I ever done that?” said Harvey, uneasily.
His father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand.
“ You know as well as I do that I can’t make anything of you if you don’t act straight by me. I can handle you alone if you’ll stay alone, but I don’t pretend to manage both you and Mama. Life’s too short, anyway.”
“Don’t make me out much of a fellow, does it?”
“I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you haven’t been much of anything up to date. Now, have you?”
“Umm! Disko thinks … Say, what d’you reckon it’s cost you to raise me from the start—first, last and all over?”
Cheyne smiled. “I’ve never kept track, but I should estimate, in dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. The young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires of ’em, and—the old man foots the bill.”
Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think