"That's all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Jerry is now eighteen. Do you realize that in three years he comes into possession of five million dollars, an income of over two hundred thousand a year; and that in seven years, at twenty-five, the executors must relinquish the entire estate?"
I had not thought of the imminence of this disaster.
"I was not aware, Mr. Ballard," I said. "At the present moment Jerry doesn't know a dollar from a nickel."
He opened his eyes wide and examined me as though he feared he had not heard correctly or as though it were blasphemy, heresy that I was uttering.
"You mean that he doesn't know the value and uses of money?"
"So far as I am aware," I replied coolly, "he has never seen a piece of money in his life."
"All wrong, all wrong, Canby. This won't do at all. He had his arithmetic, percentage and so forth?"
"Yes. But money doesn't interest him. Can you see any reason why it should?"
"And what had you planned for him?" he asked. He did not intend to be satirical perhaps. He was merely worldly.
"I thought when the time came he might be permitted to choose a vocation for himself. In the meanwhile--"
"A vocation!" he snapped. "Isn't the controlling interest in a transcontinental line of railroad vocation enough? To say nothing of coal, copper and iron mines, a steel mill or two and a fleet of steamers?"
He overpowered me for the moment. I had not thought of Jerry as being all these things. To me he was merely Jerry. But I struggled upward through the miasma of oppressive millions and met the issue squarely.
"There is nothing in John Benham's advice which directs any vocational instruction," I said staunchly. "I was to bring the boy to the age of manhood without realization of sin."
"It has not proved so," I replied, nettled. "I am merely following instructions, Mr. Benham's instructions through you to me. The dream is very real to Jerry."
Mr. Ballard gazed into the fire and smiled.
"The executors are permitted some license in this matter. We are entirely satisfied with your work. We have no desire to modify in the slightest degree the purely moral character of your instruction or indeed to change his mode of life. Indeed, I think we all agree that you are carrying out with rare judgment the spirit if not the actual letter of John Benham's wishes. Jerry is a wonderful boy. But in our opinion the time has come when his mind should be slowly shaped to grasp the essentials of the great career that awaits him."
