that. I am careful,"--she ran her arm through Archie's and when he
rose began to walk about the room with him. "I can't be careless with
money. I began the world on six hundred dollars, and it was the price of
a man's life. Ray Kennedy had worked hard and been sober and denied
himself, and when he died he had six hundred dollars to show for it. I
always measure things by that six hundred dollars, just as I measure
high buildings by the Moonstone standpipe. There are standards we can't
get away from."

Dr. Archie took her hand. "I don't believe we should be any happier if
we did get away from them. I think it gives you some of your poise,
having that anchor. You look," glancing down at her head and shoulders,
"sometimes so like your mother."

"Thank you. You couldn't say anything nicer to me than that. On Friday
afternoon, didn't you think?"

"Yes, but at other times, too. I love to see it. Do you know what I
thought about that first night when I heard you sing? I kept remembering
the night I took care of you when you had pneumonia, when you were ten
years old. You were a terribly sick child, and I was a country doctor
without much experience. There were no oxygen tanks about then. You
pretty nearly slipped away from me. If you had--"

Thea dropped her head on his shoulder. "I'd have saved myself and you a
lot of trouble, wouldn't I? Dear Dr. Archie!" she murmured.

"As for me, life would have been a pretty bleak stretch, with you left
out." The doctor took one of the crystal pendants that hung from her
shoulder and looked into it thoughtfully. "I guess I'm a romantic old
fellow, underneath. And you've always been my romance. Those years when
you were growing up were my happiest. When I dream about you, I always
see you as a little girl."

They paused by the open window. "Do you? Nearly all my dreams, except
those about breaking down on the stage or missing trains, are about
Moonstone. You tell me the old house has been pulled down, but it stands
in my mind, every stick and timber. In my sleep I go all about it, and
look in the right drawers and cupboards for everything. I often dream
that I'm hunting for my rubbers in that pile of overshoes that was
always under the hatrack in the hall. I pick up every overshoe and know
whose it is, but I can't find my own. Then the school bell begins to
ring and I begin to cry. That's the house I rest in when I'm tired. All
the old furniture and the worn spots in the carpet--it