arry though? That's the point. She doesn't want to
hang round a boarding house all her life when everybody is busy doing
interesting things. I've got a theory that the reason rich
people--especially rich women--get bored is because they don't know
anything about real life. Put one of 'em in a law office, hitting a
typewriter at fifteen dollars a week, and in a month she'd wake up to
what was really going on--she'd be _alive_!"

"'_The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings_!'"

said I. "What's Sylvia going to do?"

"Oh, she's quite a clever little artist." He handed me some charming
sketches in pencil that were lying on the table. "I think she may make
an illustrator. Heaven knows we need 'em! I'll give her a course at
Pratt Institute and then at the Academy of Design; and after that, if
they think she is good enough, I'll send her to Paris."

"I wish I'd done the same thing with my girls!" I sighed. "But the
trouble is--the trouble is--You see, if I had they wouldn't have been
doing what their friends were doing. They'd have been out of it."

"No; they wouldn't like that, of course," agreed Hastings respectfully.
"They would want to be 'in it'"

I looked at him quickly to see whether his remark had a double entendre.

"I don't see very much of my daughters," I continued. "They've got away
from me somehow."

"That's the tough part of it," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose rich
people are so busy with all the things they have to do that they haven't
much time for fooling round with their children. I have a good time with
mine though. They're too young to get away anyhow. We read French
history aloud every evening after supper. Sylvia is almost an expert on
the Duke of Guise and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew."

We smoked silently for some moments. Hastings' ideas interested me, but
I felt that he could give me something more personal--of more value to
myself. The fellow was really a philosopher in his quiet way.

"After all, you haven't told me what you meant by saying you wouldn't
change places with me," I said abruptly. "What did you mean by that? I
want to know."

"I wish you would forget I ever said it, sir," he murmured.

"No," I retorted, "I can't forget it. You needn't spare me. This talk is
not _ex cathedra_--it's just between ourselves. When you've told me why,
then I will forget it. This is man to man."

"Well," he answered slowly, "it would take