“If ever I marry,” she said, “I shall pray God to send me a man who will like me and think of me as a good friend and comrade.” They neither spoke for a while. “It was a love-match on both sides, between your father and your mother, wasn’t it?” asked Anthony. “No woman ever had a more perfect lover, so my mother told me,” she answered with a curious laugh. “For the first five years. I remember waking in the night. My mother was kneeling by my bed with her head buried in her arms. I didn’t understand. I supposed it was something grown up people did. I went to sleep again; and when I opened my eyes again it was dawn. She was still there. I called to her, and she raised her head and looked at me. It was such a strange face. I didn’t know it was my mother.” Anthony looked at the picture. Betty was growing more like her every day. “I wonder if we would be better without it,” he said. “All the great love stories of the world: they’ve all been tragedies. Even the people round about us whom we know; it always seems to end in a muddle. Is every man bound to go through it?” he added with a laugh. “Or could a man keep out of it, do you think?” “I think a strong man might,” she answered. “It’s weak men that make the best lovers.” “There have been strong men who have loved,” suggested Anthony. “Yes,” she admitted. “Those are the great love stories that end in tragedy.” There came the sound of carriage wheels. “I expect that’s dad,” she said. She had risen. Passing, she lightly laid her hand on him. “Don’t ever fall in love,” she said. “It would spoil you.” Mr. Mowbray had aged of late, but with his white, waving hair and fine features was still a handsome man. Old-fashioned clients, shaking their heads, had gone elsewhere. But new business had come to the firm. Anthony had taken his employer for a walk one summer’s evening along the river’s bank, and had talked him into the idea of turning Millsborough into a seaport town. “It could be done, with money.” The river could be widened, deepened; locks could be built. The traffic from the valley that now went north or south could be retained for Millsborough. The marvel was that nobody had ever thought of it before. “We’ve all been asleep here for the last quarter of a century,” Mr. Mowbray said, laying his arm affectionately on Anthony’s shoulder. “You’ll wake us up.” Engineers had been consulted and had sent in their reports. The scheme was practicable; Mowbray and Cousins was still a name to conjure with in business circles. The enterprise had been launched, had forced its way by its sheer merit. Not only could a handsome dividend be safely reckoned on; it would be of enormous benefit to Millsborough as a whole. “Mowbray’s coming back,” they said in Millsborough. Anthony’s share was to be a junior partnership. It was Mr. Mowbray who was the more impatient. Anthony promised to be through before the long vacation.