they can't deny
she's got the beautiful intelligence. I can trust anything so perfect. I
trust it absolutely."

"Why don't we do it ourselves? Build a fire under us, Rookie. Come on!"

"We aren't homogeneous," said Raven. "We've no race spirit, no live
nerve through the whole of us. France has. That mind of hers, that
leaping intelligence! If she were as holy as she is keen, she'd make the
world the poets dreamed of."

"Then go to it," said Nan. "Turn in your money. I will mine. Stump you!"

"Not yet," said Raven. "You sit tight and see how I come out. I haven't
got enough to set the Seine afire, but such as it is, I'd like to turn
it over to her for what she needs most: agriculture, schools, research.
Administered so it could be withdrawn if she didn't make good and turned
in somewhere else. Oh, it's a gamble! I told you it was. But
administered, mind you. That's the point."

"Through Dick," she commented, plainly with dissatisfaction. "Now, why
Dick?"

"Because," said Raven, "Dick's got a head for organizing. He's his
father over again, plus the Raven streak. And the Raven streak doesn't
do him any harm. It isn't soft, like Old Crow--and me. It's his mother
in him, and she takes back--but O Lord! what's the sense of going into
that?"

"Anyhow," said Nan, with decision, "you keep your affairs in your own
hands."

"For the present, yes," said Raven. "And I do want to think it out in
detail. I can do it at Wake Hill. I shall get on my pins enough for
that."

"Isn't it funny?" said she. "Aunt Anne with her Palace of Peace and you
with your invincible France. But, Rookie, you hear to me. Whatever you
do with your own money, you do it your own way. Don't be a slacker."

Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. He rather liked Nan's
taking him in hand.

"That's it, is it?" he asked, with a relish she was glad to see. "A
slacker! so be it. If I'm a slacker, I am. I'm a conscientious objector.
What I object to is the universe, the pattern it's made on. I object to
the way we're running it, and, being made as we are, I don't see how we
can be expected to do anything but what we're doing. It's a perfectly
logical proposition. And except for a few minor chores I've got to see
to, I simply won't play."

Nan was thinking. She looked down at her hands, lying in her lap. Raven
looked at them also and wondered, as he often had, since they came home,
how such hands could have done the tasks she set them to. She