the softened look.
He was hanging to his point.

"Yes," he said. "He's old. You're young. So am I. We belong together. We
can be awfully fond of him. We are. But it's got to be in the right way.
He could live with us. We'd simply devote ourselves to him. But Nan, the
world belongs to us. We're young."

At that instant Raven came in and set down his tray. Nan glanced up at
him fearfully, but it was apparent he had not heard. She was no longer
angry. The occasion was too big. Dick seemed to her to be speaking out
of his ignorance and not from any wilful cruelty. She got up and went to
Raven, as he stood there, put her hand through his arm and smiled up at
him.

"Rookie," she said, with a half laugh that was really a caress,
"darlingest Rookie! Charlotte never got that supper together in the
world. You did it yourself, not to disturb her. I never saw so much food
at one time, in all my life."

It was a monstrous feast, bread, butter, cheese, ham: very neatly
assembled, but for a giant's appetite.

"We'll all have some," sad Raven. "Draw up, old son. Nan'll butter for
us."

For the first minutes it seemed to Dick he could not eat, the lump in
his throat had risen so. But Nan buttered and they did eat and felt
better. Raven avoided looking at them, wondering what they were
quarreling about now. It must, he thought, be the way of this new
generation starting out avowedly "on its own."

XXIX

The blessed diversion of eating ended, a blank moment stared them in the
face. What to say next? Were Nan and Dick, Raven wondered, to go on
fighting? Was it the inevitable course of up-to-date courtship? Perhaps
the new generation, from its outlook on elemental things, was taking to
marriage by capture, clubbing the damsel and striding off, her limpness
flung over a brawny arm. It seemed to him a singularly bare, unshaded
way to the rose-leaf bowers his poets had been used to sing; but
undoubtedly the roads were many, and this was one. Possibly the poets
wouldn't say the same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must
be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the
cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance,
he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off an
awkward moment.

"Run over this," he said. "Nan and I've been doing it. I don't believe
we're in any hurry for bed."

Dick took it, with no show of interest. How should he have been
int