One Saturday morning in the spring, when the Professor was at work in the old house, he heard energetic footsteps running up the uncarpeted stairway. Louie’s voice called:

“Cher Papa, shall I disturb you too much?”

St. Peter rose and opened to him. Louie was wearing his golf stockings, and a purple jacket with a fur collar.

“No, I’m not going golfing. I changed my mind, but didn’t have time to change my clothes. I want you to take a run out along the lake-shore with us. Rosie is going to lunch with some friends at the Country Club. We’ll have a drive with her, and then drop her there. It’s a glorious day.” Louie’s keen, interested eye ran about the shabby little room. He chuckled. “The old bear, he just likes his old den, doesn’t he? I can readily understand. Your children were born here. Not your daughters — your sons, your splendid Spanish-adventurer sons! I’m proud to be related to them, even by marriage. And your blanket, surely that’s a Spanish touch!” Louie pounced upon the purple blanket, threw it across his chest, and, moving aside the wire lady, studied himself in Augusta’s glass. “And a very proper dressing-gown it would make for Louie, wouldn’t it?”

“It was Outland’s — a precious possession. His lost chum brought it up from Mexico.”

“Was it Outland’s, indeed?” Louie stroked it and regarded it in the glass with increased admiration. “I can never forgive destiny that I hadn’t the chance to know that splendid fellow.”

The Professor’s eyebrows rose in puzzled interrogation. “It might have been awkward — about Rosie, you know.”

“I never think of him as a rival,” said Louie, throwing back the blanket with a wide gesture. “I think of him as a brother, an adored and gifted brother.”

Half an hour later they were spinning along through the country, just coming green, Rosamond and her father on the back seat, Louie facing them. It struck the Professor that Louie had something on his mind; his restless bright eyes watched his wife narrowly, as if to seize an opportune moment.

“You know, Doctor,” he said presently, “we’ve decided to give up our house before we go abroad, and cut off the rent. We’ll move the books and pictures up to Outland (and our wedding presents, of course), and the silver we’ll put in the bank. There won’t be much of our present furniture that we’ll need. I wonder if you could use any of it? And it has just occurred to me, Rosie,” here he leaned forward and tapped her knee, “that we might ask Scott and Kathleen to come round and select anything they like. No use bothering to sell it, we’d get so little.”

Rosamond looked at him in astonishment. It was very evident they had not discussed anything of this sort before. “Don’t be foolish, Louie,” she said quietly. “They wouldn’t want your things.”

“But why not?” he persisted playfully. “They are very nice things. Not right for Outland, but perfectly right for a little house. We chose them with care, and we don’t want them going into some dirty second-hand shop.”

“They won’t have to. We can store them in the attic at Outland, Heaven knows it’s big enough! You don’t have to do anything with them just now.”

“It seems a pity, when somebody might be getting the good of them. I know Scott could do very well with that chiffonier of mine. He admired it greatly, I remember, and said he’d never had one with proper drawers for his shirts.”

Rosamond’s lip curled.

“Don’t look like that, Rosie! It’s naughty. Stop it!” Louie reached forward and shook her gently by the elbows. “And how can you be sure the McGregors wouldn’t like our thi............