o leave nothing unsaid where realistic verse
demanded it, and he was consigning Nan to the decorum Aunt Anne herself
demanded. Was the young animal of the present day really unchanged from
the first man who protected his own by a fettering seclusion, simply
because it was his own? Was Dick's general revolt only the yeasty
turmoil sure to take one form or another, being simply the swiftness of
young blood? Was his general bravado only skin deep? Raven hardly knew
how to take him. He wouldn't be angry, outwardly at least. The things
Dick had said, the things he was prepared to say, he would be expected
to resent, but he must deny himself. It was bad for the boy, and more, a
subtle slur on Nan. They mustn't squabble over her, as if her sweet
inviolateness could be in any way touched by either of them. Presently
he took his pipe out, looked at it curiously as if it did not altogether
please him and remarked:

"Dick, you're a fool."

"Oh, yes," said Dick, with a bitterness that curled his lip a little,
"I'm a young fool, too, I suppose. Well, thank God for that. I am young,
and I know it, and just what I'm getting out of it and what I've a right
to get. You can't play that game with me, Uncle Jack. You simply can't
do it. The old game's played out."

"And what," said Raven mildly, "is the old game? And what's the new one
going to be? You'll have to tell me. I don't know."

"The old game," said Dick, "was precisely what it was in politics. The
old men made the rules and the young were expected to conform. The old
men made wars and the young fought 'em. The old men lied and skulked and
the young had to pull them out of the holes they got into. I suppose
you'd say the War was won at Chequers Court. Well, I shouldn't. I should
say it was won by the young men who had their brains blown out, and lost
their eyes and their legs."

"No," said Raven quietly, "I shouldn't say the War was won at Chequers
Court. We needn't fight over that. The thing that gets me is why we need
to fight at all. There's been a general armistice and Eastern Europe
doesn't seem to have heard of it. They go on scrapping. You don't seem
to have heard of it either. You come home here and find me peaceably
retired to Charlotte and Jerry and my Sabine Farm, and you proceed to
declare war on me. What the devil possesses you?"

"Yes," said Dick, the muscle twitching in his lip, "I do find you here.
And Nan with you."

"Dick," said Raven sharply, "we'll leav