ead and chuckled.

He stepped into the living-room as he passed through the hall and
reached for his pipe in a rack above the mantel. "Do you smoke," he
asked half-hesitatingly, but with an excess of courtesy in his voice as
if he were apologizing for asking such a question.

"Sometimes; a pipe, if you please." He held out his hand; Champney
handed him a sweetbrier and a tobacco pouch. "You permit, Madam?" He
spoke with old world courtesy. Aurora Googe smiled permission. She saw
with satisfaction her son's puzzled look of inquiry as he noted the
connoisseurship with which Father Honore handled his after-supper tools.

Mrs. Milton Caukins, their neighbor in the stone house across the bridge
over the Rothel, stood for several minutes at her back door listening to
Champney's continued arpeggios and wondered whose was the deep hearty
laugh that answered them. In telling his afternoon's experience
Champney, also, had his reserves: of the coming serenade he said never a
word to the priest.

"He's O.K. and a man, mother," was his comment on their guest, as he
bade her good night. Aurora Googe answered him with a smile that
betokened content, but she was wise enough not to commit herself in
words. Afterwards she sat long in her room, planning for her son's
future. The twenty thousand she had just received for the undeveloped
quarry lands should serve to start him well in life.

VII

On the following day, mother and son constituted themselves a committee
of ways and means as to the best investment of the money in furtherance
of Champney's interests. Her ambition was gratified in that she saw him
anxious to take his place in the world of affairs, to "get on" and, as
he said, make his mark early in the world of finance.

The fact that, during his college course, he had spent the five thousand
received from the sale of the first quarry, plus the interest on the
same without accounting for a penny of it, seemed to his mother
perfectly legitimate; for she had sold the land and laid by the amount
paid for it in order to put her son through college. Since he was twelve
years old she had brought him up in the knowledge that it was to be his
for that purpose. From the time he came, through her generosity, into
possession of the property, she always replied to those who had the
courage to criticise her course in placing so large a sum at the
disposal of a youth:

"My son is a man. I realize I can suggest, but not dictate; moreo