The Towers of Love by Stephen; Birmingham

me. She’s a very bad liar, you know. Your mother’s never learned how to tell a decent lie. Half the time, when she does that thing, she forgets to take down the screen or put away the projector, and there it is when I get home—all the incriminating evidence. No, all I have to do is to ask her, Hugh, if she’s been doing it, and she’ll tell me.”
    â€œGod, I wish she wouldn’t.”
    His father shook his head sadly. “So do I.”
    His father took another swallow of coffee. Then he said, “Well, anyway, it’s happy news about Pansy. I’m glad that’s worked out. Pansy’s all set. But what I really want to talk about is you. Tell me about you.”
    â€œWell, as I guess you’ve heard, I’ve sold my share of the agency.”
    â€œYes. So I understand. Of course the first thing I wondered when I heard it, naturally, was why?”
    â€œWell,” he said, “let me explain. I had a little disagreement with Joe—Joe Wallace. No,” he said, raising his hand, “don’t get me wrong. We didn’t have a fight or anything like that. It was a perfectly friendly disagreement, a business disagreement on policy. No, Joe and I are still good friends. I’ve very fond of Joe, and Joe’s fond of me. But we just couldn’t agree on policy.”
    â€œWhat sort of policy?” his father asked.
    â€œWell,” he said, “I don’t know how much you know about the advertising agency business, Dad.”
    â€œNothing whatever. But tell me.”
    â€œWell, look at it this way. There’s sort of a dividing line between agencies. If you’re billing about ten million dollars a year, you’re considered a small agency. And a small agency has certain advantages over a big one—closer relationships between top men and the clients, you know. That sort of thing. But when an agency gets big—takes on more clients—begins to get over the ten-million mark, you lose that. Then, if you’re over ten million, you might as well be fifty million. And that was where Joe and I disagreed. I wanted us to stay the size we were—right about ten million. I considered that one of our agency’s values—that intimacy we could have with the clients we worked for. But Joe—well, Joe’s an ambitious guy. He wanted us to keep right on growing—to shoot for the moon. He wanted to go after more clients—more and more. He wanted us to end up being the biggest agency in New York, if we could. We argued and argued about it, all the pros and cons—finally we decided that we just couldn’t agree, couldn’t reconcile our points of view. There’s not much compromise possible between wanting to be big and wanting to stay small. So Joe offered to buy me out, and I accepted the offer.”
    â€œWell,” his father said, “I guess I understand. And I think I’d sympathise with your point of view more than Joe’s. I think there’s a certain—ah, value—in remaining a manageable size. It’s the same with my law firm. Because we’re not trying to be Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft or some damn’ thing, all the partners can be on close terms with all our clients. It’s good for business.”
    â€œA lot of companies want big agencies,” Hugh said. “But plenty of others prefer small ones. If Joe goes on getting bigger, he’s going to lose some of his present accounts along the way.”
    â€œSure,” his father said, nodding. “Sure he will.”
    â€œAnyway,” Hugh said, “that’s the situation. As a result I’ve got quite a lot of money in the bank right now. I’ve got to start hunting around for some place to invest it.”
    â€œWell, no trouble about that,” his father said. “Talk to Percy Morris at the bank about that. He’ll give you some tips on that sort of thing. But what about you,