Robert Lloyd when he came to Rowe was confronted with one of the hardest tasks in the world, that of adjustment to circumstances which had hitherto been out of his imagination.

He had not dreamed of a business life in connection with himself.

Though he had always had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage.

He had expected to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face the unexpected.

The stocks in which the greater part of the elder Lloyd's money had been invested had depreciated; some of them were for the time being quite worthless as far as income was concerned.
There were two little children--girls--by his father's second marriage, and there was not enough to support them and their mother and allow Robert to continue his reading for the law.