more I loved you,
the more I should be taking over the old tyranny: direct succession,
Rookie, don't you see?"

Here she laughed, though with some slight bitterness, and he did see.
Aunt Anne had ruled his life, to the drying up of normal springs in it.
Nan didn't mean to accept the inheritance. He was profoundly touched, by
her giving so much grave thought to it, at least.

"But, dearest child," he said, "what does it matter now? I'm rather a
meager person. You couldn't dress me up with attributes, out of your
dear mind. I shouldn't know how to wear 'em. I'm no end grateful to you
for wanting to. But if you gave me the earth for a football now I'm too
stiff to kick it. It's a curve, life is. Don't you know that? You're on
the up-grade, you and Dick. I may not have got very far, but I'm on the
down."

"And yet," said Nan, turning and laying a finger on the book at her
side, "you can read a thing like that, a man's life turned inside out
for you to see, and understand what he meant by it, and then say the
game's up. You make me tired."

If he made her tired, she made him unaffectedly surprised.

"But, Nan," he said, "I didn't know you caught on so tremendously to the
old chap. I didn't know it meant so very much to you."

"Of course it means things to me," she said. "Anyway because it does to
you. You came up here sick, sick at heart, sick in your mind, because
you've been through the War and you've seen what's underneath our
proprieties and our hypocrisies. You see we're still in the jungle. And
it's nearly killed you out, Rookie, the dear you inside you that's not
at home in the jungle. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what kind
of a Rookie you are. Things hurt you like blazes. And then here comes
Old Crow, just as if he rose out of his grave and pointed a finger at
you. And he says, 'Don't be afraid, even of the jungle.' And suddenly
you weren't afraid. And now you're afraid again, and talk about downward
curves, and all that. Why, Rookie, I'm older than you are, years and
years."

Raven's mouth and eyes were wide open in amazement at her.

"I'm damned!" said he conversationally. "The way you young things go on.
You put us in our places. Dick does, too. You've heard him. But, as I
remember, then you had a tendency to choke him off."

"We won't discuss Dick," said she, again prim as a dish. "And I'm not
putting you in your place because I belong to my own generation. It's
only because you fill up the fo