city. So pleased did he become with the success of his new venture that
in course of time all his money was reinvested after this fashion.

At the time of his father's greatest prosperity Vandover himself began
to draw toward his fifteenth year, entering upon that period of change
when the first raw elements of character began to assert themselves and
when, if ever, there was a crying need for the influence of his mother.
Any feminine influence would have been well for him at this time: that
of an older sister, even that of a hired governess. The housekeeper
looked after him a little, mended his clothes, saw that he took his bath
Saturday nights, and that he did not dig tunnels under the garden walks.
But her influence was entirely negative and prohibitory and the two were
constantly at war. Vandover grew in a haphazard way and after school
hours ran about the streets almost at will.

At fifteen he put on long trousers, and the fall of the same year
entered the High School. He had grown too fast and at this time was tall
and very lean; his limbs were straight, angular, out of all proportion,
with huge articulations at the elbows and knees. His neck was long and
thin and his head large, his face was sallow and covered with pimples,
his ears were big, red and stuck out stiff from either side of his head.
His hair he wore "pompadour."

Within a month after his entry of the High School he had a nickname. The
boys called him "Skinny-seldom-fed," to his infinite humiliation.

Little by little the crude virility of the young man began to develop in
him. It was a distressing, uncanny period. Had Vandover been a girl he
would at this time have been subject to all sorts of abnormal vagaries,
such as eating his slate pencil, nibbling bits of chalk, wishing he were