‘I kind of trust your mechanical sense, and you seem to think this Duplex is O.K., Paul. I’ll think it over.’

‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to jump. They can only keep it open for us a few days. Honestly! You’ll have to put up ten thousand cash for a start. All they need is that and your signature on the contract.’

And Fred signed. And the bookkeeper notarized. And the office-boy galloped off to the post-office to catch the air mail. And just as Fred leaned back, fretting a little, the Norse god Howard glowed into the office.

‘Hello, Dad. H’are you, h’are you?’

‘Fine and dandy, Howard. Ribs all right?’

‘Grand!’

‘What you doing in town?’

‘Li’l’ party with the Staybridges — Guy’s going to introduce Sara and me to his Dad, you know, old Putnam, and his sister Annabel. Course I’ve met Annabel, dances and so on, but I don’t really know her. And a friend of mine, a labour leader — Eugene Silga, his name is — is coming along.’

(It is true that, with 125,000 inhabitants in Sachem Falls, sound burghers like the Cornplows would not, save by accident, be intimate with the proud Staybridges.)

‘All right, son. Staying at the house to-night?’

‘No, got to buzz back to Truxon and . . . No, no, now wait, Dad. I’ll drive like an old lady.’

‘You will not! And if you want to break your neck, that’s your business, but I’m getting good and tired of paying fines and repair bills, while you loaf through college!’

‘But,’ with wide, glad innocence, ‘that’s just what I came to see you about! Dad, I’m not getting anything out of college. The professors are the darnedest lot of crabs and bookworms. What good does it do me to learn about the — the — well, all these things they teach you? Couldn’t you give me a job here in the agency?’

‘Son, someday I hope you do really settle down and look at things seriously and want to come in with me. Someday I’ll be thinking about retiring.’

‘You? Never! You like your hand on the steering wheel too well! You’ll be shoving off Triumphs on the sub-agents when you’re eighty. But how about me starting in here . . .’

‘Howard, I don’t want to be any crankier than the law allows, but I certainly don’t want you here, filling this place up with a lot of your fancy college friends, Guy Staybridge and God knows who all else, smoking and singing and playing contract.’

‘Dad, you don’t understand! Eugene has shown both Guy and me where . . . We’ve cut out being aristocrats.’

‘Don’t tell me!’

‘We have. We see now that there’s got to be a new world. Youth has got to take charge. Gene and Guy and me have been thinking about starting a cell of the Workers’ International Cohesion in Sachem — the “Coheeze” they call it — you know, to make a United Front of all socialists and democrats and liberals and the whole bloomin’ lot. I don’t intend to have anything more to do with all those snobs and idlers. I’m going to go to work for you, and Guy and me are going to just associate with the intellectuals.’