in, no longer _persona grata_ with the debutantes and
younger college set, found himself left much done, except for the
companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in the
neighbourhood. His idea of going to St. Midas's school recurred to
him.

"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over and over that I
want to go to prep, school."

"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter was distasteful
to him, and he wished to avoid a discussion.

"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll have to enter me
and take me up there."

"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His eyes narrowed and
he looked uneasily at his father. "As a matter of fact," he added,
"you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You better
pull up short. You better--you better"--he paused and his face
crimsoned as he sought for words--"you better turn right around and
start back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't
funny any longer. You--you behave yourself!"

Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.

"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors are in the house
I want you to call me 'Uncle'--not 'Roscoe,' but 'Uncle,' do you
understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my
first name. Perhaps you'd better call me 'Uncle' _all_ the time,
so you'll get used to it."

With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away....

10

At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered dismally
upstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved for
three months, but he could find nothing on his face but a faint white
down with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he had first
come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the proposition
that he should wear eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his
cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early
years was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him
ashamed. He wept and Roscoe had reluctantly relented.

Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, _The Boy Scouts in Bimini
Bay_, and began to read. But he found himself thinking persistently
about the war. America had joined the Allied cause during the
preceding month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen was
the minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which was
fifty-seven, would have disqualified him, anyway.

There was a knock at his door, and the butl