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And I've acquired a tidy fortune. I was able to pay Saunders back in full in five years, and the rest has gone into investments, or toward your schooling—what's the matter, Jocky?"

"Nothing. Only I must be God's dumbest white creature!" . . . Yvonne, then Eunice, shadowed his mind. "Damn it, I never see anything until somebody beats it in!" he lamented.

Mrs. Hamill lay still, fondling with her eyes the line of the big frame, the symmetry of the black bent head. "Don't say you were very dumb," she suggested, "say that I was very clever. I went to the most exaggerated lengths to keep all this a secret from you. Remember the time camp closed unexpectedly on account of the measles and you wired me you'd be home about nine o'clock that night? The wire reached me at seven. I never put in such a two hours in my life! But by the time you got here every last trace was locked away down cellar, and Bennett was stationed behind a tree at the foot of the driveway to shoo off the cars, and your mother was spending a quiet evening in the home—as mothers should! And if you'd given me the slightest warning tonight——"

"But you must have known I'd get hep sometime!" Jock broke in. "Balmy as I am, it was bound to come sometime. What did you expect to do after I graduated? Board me out, or something?"

"I expected to retire," said Mrs. Hamill. "Permanently. In fact I've already made preparations to shut up shop in another month or so. I can do it. I've saved enough, we'll never starve. And I was sanguine enough to hope that you'd never be any the wiser."

"What do you mean 'we'll never starve'?" cried Jock. "Do you think you're going to keep on paying