And he had a father's doubt of the wholesomeness of other people's children who were born into the world indiscriminately and not under the exceptional conditions of his own.

"I'll go and fetch him," he said.
"You haven't told me anything about your interview; what you did and what your good friend Stacy said," said Mrs.Barker, dropping languidly into a chair.

"And really if you are simply running away again after that child, I might just as well have asked Captain Heath to stay longer." "Oh, as to Stacy," said Barker, dropping beside her and taking her hand; "well, dear, he was awfully busy, you know, and shut up in the innermost office like the agate in one of the Japanese nests of boxes.

But," he continued, brightening up, "just the same dear old Jim Stacy of Heavy Tree Hill, when I first knew you.

Lord! dear, how it all came back to me! That day I proposed to you in the belief that I was unexpectedly rich and even bought a claim for the boys on the strength of it, and how I came back to them to find that they had made a big strike on the very claim.