words the three young men started violently, looked behind them, and then jumped precipitately to their feet. Reclining lazily in an armchair not two yards away sat a gold-and-ivory little beauty with dark eyes and a moving, childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world. When she saw the startled expressions on their faces she gave vent to a suppressed chuckle in which the victims after a moment joined.
“This is my daughter,” said Cyrus Girard, smiling innocently. “Don’t be so alarmed. She has many suitors come from far and near—and all that sort of thing. Stop making these young men feel silly, Lola, and ask them if they’ll come to dinner with us tonight.”
Lola got to her feet gravely and her grey eyes fell on them one after another.
“I only know part of your names,” she said.
“Easily arranged,” said Van Buren. “Mine’s George.”
The tall young man bowed.
“I respond to John Hardwick Parrish,” he confessed, “or anything of that general sound.”
She turned to the dark-haired southerner, who had volunteered no information. “How about Mr. Jones?”
“Oh, just—Jones,” he answered uneasily.
She looked at him in surprise.
“Why, how partial!” she exclaimed, laughing. “How—I might even say how fragmentary.”
Mr. Jones looked around him in a frightened way.
“Well, I tell you,” he said finally, “I don’t guess my first name is much suited to this sort of thing.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Rip.”
“Rip!”
Eight eyes turned reproachfully upon him.
“Young man,” exclaimed Girard, “you don’t mean that my old friend in his senses named his son that!”
Jones shifted defiantly on his feet.
“No, he didn’t,” he admitted. “He named me Oswald.”
There was a ripple of sympathetic laughter.
“Now you four go along,” said Girard, sitting down at his desk. “Tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp you report to my general manager, Mr. Galt, and the tournament begins. Meanwhile if Lola has her coupé-sport-limousine-roadster-landaulet, or whatever she drives now, she’ll probably take you to your respective hotels.”
After they had gone Girard’s face grew restless again and he stared at nothing for a long time before he pressed the button that started the long-delayed stream of traffic through his mind.
“One of them’s sure to be all right,” he muttered, “but suppose it turned out to be the dark one. Rip Jones, Incorporated!”
II
As the three months drew to an end it began to appear that not one, but all of the young men were going to turn out all right. They were all industrious, they were all possessed of that mysterious ease known as personality and, moreover, they all had brains. If Parrish, the tall young man from the West, was a little the quicker in sizing up the market; if Jones, the southerner, was a bit the most impressive in his relations with customers, then Van Buren made up for it by spending his nights in the study of investment securities. Cyrus Girard’s mind was no sooner drawn to one of them by some exhibition of shrewdness or resourcefulness than a parallel talent appeared in one of the others. Instead of having to enforce upon himself a strict neutrality he found himself trying to concentrate upon the individual merits of first one and then another—but so far without success.
Every week-end they all came out to the Girard place at Tuxedo Park, where they fraternized a little self-consciously with the young and lovely Lola, and on Sunday mornings tactlessly defeated her father at golf. On the last tense week-end before the decision was to be made Cyrus Girard asked them to meet him in his study after dinner. On their respective merits as future partners in Cyrus Girard, Inc., he had been unable to decide, but his despair had evoked another plan, on which he intended to base his decision.
“Gentlemen,” he said, when they had convoked in his study at the appointed hour, “I have brought you here to tell you that you’re all fired.”
Immediately the three young men were on their feet, with shocked, reproachful expressions in their eyes.
“Temporarily,” he added, smiling good-humoredly. “So spare a decrepit old man your violence and sit down.”
They sat down, with short relieved smiles.
“I like you all,” he went on, “and I don’t know which one I like better than the others. In fact—this thing hasn’t come out right at all. So I’m going to extend the competition for two more weeks—but in an entirely different way.”
They all sat forward eagerly in their chairs.
“Now my generation,” he went on, “have made a failure of our leisure hours. We grew up in the most hard-boiled commercial age any country ever knew, and when we retire we never know what to do with the rest of our lives. Here I am, getting out at sixty, and miserable about it. I haven’t any resources—I’ve never been much of a reader, I can’t stand golf except once a week, and I haven’t got a hobby in the world. Now someday you’re going to be sixty too. You’ll see other men taking it easy and having a good time, and you’ll want to do the same. I want to find out which one of you will be the best sort of man after his business days are over.”
He looked from one to the other of them eagerly. Parrish and Van Buren nodded at him comprehendingly. Jones after a puzzled half-moment nodded too.
“I want you each to take two weeks and spend them as you think you’ll spend your time when you’re too old to work. I want you to solve my problem for me. And whichever one I think has got the most out of his leisure—he’ll be the man to carry on my business. I’ll know it won’t swamp him like it’s swamped me.”
“You mean you want us to enjoy ourselves?” inquired Rip Jones politely. “Just go out and have a big time?”
Cyrus Girard nodded.
“Anything you want to do.”
“I take it Mr. Girard doesn’t include dissipation,” remarked Van Buren.
“Anything you want to do,” repeated the older man. “I don’t bar anything. When it’s all done I’m going to judge of its merits.”
“Two weeks of travel for me,” said Parrish dreamily. “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ll——”
“Travel!” interrupted Van Buren contemptuously. “When there’s so much to do here at home? Travel, perhaps, if you had a year; but for two weeks—— I’m going to try and see how the retired business man can be of some use in the world.”
“I said travel,” repeated Parrish sharply. “I believe we’re all to employ our leisure in the best——”
“Wait
