"Well, I reckon I got to be going.

You ready to go up-town, Conrad ?" "Well, not quite yet, father." The old man shook hands with March, and went downstairs, followed by his son.
Fulkerson remained.
"He didn't jump at the chance you gave him to compliment us all round, Fulkerson," said March, with a smile not wholly of pleasure.
Fulkerson asked, with as little joy in the grin he had on, "Didn't he say anything to you before I came in ?" "Not a word." "Dogged if I know what to make of it," sighed Fulkerson, "but I guess he's been having a talk with Conrad that's soured on him.

I reckon maybe he came back expecting to find that boy reconciled to the glory of this world, and Conrad's showed himself just as set against it as ever." "It might have been that," March admitted, pensively.

"I fancied something of the kind myself from words the old man let drop." Fulkerson made him explain, and then he said: "That's it, then; and it's all right.

Conrad 'll come round in time; and all we've got to do is to have patience with the old man till he does.
I know he likes you." Fulkerson affirmed this only interrogatively, and looked so anxiously to March for corroboration that March laughed.
"He dissembled his love," he said; but afterward, in describing to his wife his interview with Mr.Dryfoos, he was less amused with this fact.
When she saw that he was a little cast down by it, she began to encourage him.