eper. In fact that is what I shall be in less than two weeks. I
am going into partnership with my father. The new sign _Stuart Lambert
and Son_ is being painted now."

Carlotta gasped.

"Phil! You wouldn't. You can't."

"Oh yes, Carlotta. I not only could and would but I am going to. It has
been understood ever since I first went to college that when I was out
I'd put my shoulder to the wheel beside Dad's. He has been pushing alone
too long as it is. He needs me. You don't know how happy he and Mums are
about it. It is what they have dreamed about and planned, for years. I'm
the only son, you know. It's up to me."

"But, Phil! It is an awful sacrifice for you." For once Carlotta forgot
herself completely.

"Not a bit of it. It is a flourishing concern--not just a two-by-four
village shop--a real department store, doing real business and making
real money. Dad built it all up himself, too. He has a right to be proud
of it and I am lucky to be able to step in and enjoy the results of all
his years of hard work. I'm not fooling myself about that. Don't get the
impression I am being a martyr or anything of the sort. I most
distinctly am not."

Carlotta made a little inarticulate exclamation. Mechanically she counted
the cars of the train which was winding its black, snake-like trail far
down below them in the valley. It hadn't occurred to her that the moon
would be difficult to dislodge. Perhaps Carlotta didn't know much about
moons, after all.

Phil went on talking earnestly, putting his case before her as best he
might. He owed it to Carlotta to try to make her understand if he could.
He thought that, under all the whimsicalities, it was rather fine of her
to lay down her princess pride and let him see she cared, that she really
wanted him. It made her dearer, harder to resist than ever. If only he
could make her understand!

"You see I'm not fitted for city life," he explained. "I hate it. I like
to live where everybody has a plot of green grass in front of his house
to set his rocking chair in Sunday afternoons; where people can have
trees that they know as well as they know their own family and don't have
to go to a park to look at 'em; where they can grow tulips and green
peas--and babies, too, if the lord is good to 'em. I want to plant my
roots where people are neighborly and interested in each other as human
beings, not shut away like cave dwellers in apartment houses, not knowing
or caring who is on the