At times he seemed wary and masterful, and then March felt that he was being examined and tested; at others so simple that March might well have fancied that he needed encouragement, and desired it.

He talked of his wife and daughters in a way that invited March to say friendly things of his family, which appeared to give the old man first an undue pleasure and then a final distrust.

At moments he turned, with an effect of finding relief in it, to his son and spoke to him across March of matters which he was unacquainted with; he did not seem aware that this was rude, but the young man must have felt it so; he always brought the conversation back, and once at some cost to himself when his father made it personal.
"I want to make a regular New York business man out of that fellow," he said to March, pointing at Conrad with his stick.

"You s'pose I'm ever going to do it ?" "Well, I don't know," said March, trying to fall in with the joke.

"Do you mean nothing but a business man ?" The old man laughed at whatever latent meaning he fancied in this, and said: "You think he would be a little too much for me there?
Well, I've seen enough of 'em to know it don't always take a large pattern of a man to do a large business.