dard."

"If you don't mind I shouldn't." Caroline Paine was setting her feet
to a rocky path, but she did not falter. "You shouldn't mind if I
don't."

Becky laid down the chaplet of leaves. She knew some of the things
Caroline Paine had sacrificed and she was thrilled by them. "Randy,"
she admonished, with youthful severity, "it would be a shame to
disappoint your mother."

Randolph flushed beneath his dark skin. The Paines had an Indian
strain in them--Pocahontas was responsible for it, or some of the other
princesses who had mixed red blood with blue in the days when Virginia
belonged to the King. Randy showed signs of it in his square-set jaw,
the high lift of his head, his long easy stride, the straightness of
his black hair. He showed it, too, in a certain stoical impassiveness
which might have been taken for indifference. His world was, for the
moment, against him; he would attempt no argument.

"I am afraid this doesn't interest Major Prime," he said.

"It interests me very much," said the Major. "It is only another case
of the fighting man's adjustment to life after his return. We all have
to face it in one way or another." His eyes went out over the hills.
They were gray eyes, deep set, and, at this moment, kindly. They could
blaze, however, in stress of fighting, like bits of steel. "We all
have to face it in one way or another. And the future of America
depends largely on our seeing things straight."

"Well, there's only one way for Randy to face it," said Caroline Paine,
firmly, "and that is to do as his fathers did before him."

"If I do," Randy flared, "it will be three years before I can make a
living, and I'll be twenty-five."

Becky put on the chaplet of leaves. It fitted like a cap. She might
have been a dryad, escaped for a moment from the old oak. "Three years
isn't long."

"Suppose I should want to marry----"

"Oh, you--Randy----"

"But why shouldn't I?"

"I don't want you to get married," she told him; "when I come down we
couldn't have our nice times together. You'd always be thinking about
your wife."

IV

From the porch of the Country Club, George Dalton had seen the Judge's
party at luncheon. According to George's lexicon no one who could
afford to go to the club would eat out of a basket. He rather blushed
for Becky that she must sit there in the sight of everybody and share a
feast with a shabby old Judge, a lean and lank stripling with straight
hair