-just the same--isn't it better for Jimsy to keep away
from--from those things?"

"Naturally. Better for anybody."

She sighed. "Carter doesn't think so. He says the world is full of
it--Jimsy must learn to be near it and let it alone."

"That's true, in a sense, T. S...."

"I know. But--sometimes I think Carter deliberately takes Jimsy places
to--test him. Of course he thinks he's doing right, but it worries me."

Stephen Lorimer smoked in silence. He had his own ideas. "Better have
that talk with him," he said.

Honor found the talk oddly disturbing. Carter was very sweet about it as
he always was with her, but he held stubbornly to his own opinion.

"Look here, Honor, you can't follow Jimsy through the world like a
nursemaid, you know."

"Carter! I don't mean----"

"He's got to meet and face these things, to fight what somebody calls
'the battle of his blood.' You mustn't wrap him up in cotton wool. If
he's going, to be bowled over he might as well find it out. He must take
his chances--just as any other fellow--just as I must."

"Oh, but, Carter, you know you're strong, and----"

Suddenly his pale face was stung with hot color. "Honor," he leaned
forward, "you think I'm strong, in _any_ way? You don't consider me
an--utter weakling?"

She looked with comprehending tenderness at his crimson face. "Why,
Carter, dear! You know I've never thought you that! There are more ways
of being--being strong than--than just with muscles and bones!"

He reached out and took one of her firm, tanned hands in his, and she
had never seen him so winningly wistful, so wistfully winning. "I
thought," he said, very low, "that was the only kind of strength that
counted with you. Then--I do count with you, Honor? I do?"

She was a little startled, a little frightened, wholly uncomfortable.
There was something in Carter's voice she didn't understand ... something
she didn't want to understand. She pulled her hand away and managed her
boyish grin. "Of course you do,--goose! And you'll count more if you'll
help me to look after Jimsy and have him graduate on time!" She got up
quickly as her stepfather came into the room, and Carter went home,
crossing the street with the rather pathetic arrogance of his halting
gait, his head held high, tilted a little back, which gave him the
expression of looking down on a world of swift striders.

He found his mother reading before a low fire. "Well, dearest?" She
smiled up at him, yearnin