"I just wanted to get him away a minute. I don't care
to say it to his face,--I don't like the principle,--but
since you ask me about it, I'd just as lief say that I've
never had any young man take hold here equal to your son.
I don't know as you care"
"You make me very happy," said Bromfield Corey.
"Very happy indeed. I've always had the idea that there
was something in my son, if he could only find the way
to work it out. And he seems to have gone into your
business for the love of it."
"He went to work in the right way, sir! He told me about it.
He looked into it. And that paint is a thing that will
bear looking into."
"Oh yes. You might think he had invented it, if you
heard him celebrating it."
"Is that so?" demanded Lapham, pleased through
and through. "Well, there ain't any other way.
You've got to believe in a thing before you can put any
heart in it. Why, I had a partner in this thing once,
along back just after the war, and he used to be always
wanting to tinker with something else. 'Why,' says I,
'you've got the best thing in God's universe now.
Why ain't you satisfied?' I had to get rid of him at last.
I stuck to my paint, and that fellow's drifted round pretty
much all over the whole country, whittling his capital
down all the while, till here the other day I had to lend
him some money to start him new.
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