"Happiness, Sally," he resumed, absently gazing at the wall, "is--but you probably do not care for my views on the subject of happiness," he said, interrupting himself and glancing at her with a smile. The smile was rather pleasant to contemplate; a thing sufficiently remarkable--for him. "Probably you think I am better qualified to tell you what it is not than what it is; how to avoid it than how to get it. I can give advice, but I cannot follow it." Sally smiled quickly. "Your views are interesting," she said. She stirred a little. She did not know how he would take what she was about to say. "You would--would you feel hurt, father, if I should offer you an allowance?" A quarter of an hour before, he would not have felt hurt or embarrassed in the least. In fact, that was the very thing he had come there for. At the moment, it was different. A flush crept into his face slowly. "Why should I feel hurt?" His voice had changed. It had lost that intimate quality which it had had during the last few minutes, when he had been on the point of telling Sally about happiness. "It is Uncle John's money, I suppose? Why should I feel any compunctions about taking it? And--er--there are conditions incident to the acceptance of this--er--this gift, I suppose?" "I'm afraid there are," she replied; "at least, tacitly understood." He considered for a few moments. "I think," he said then, "that it will conduce to happiness, on the whole, if we are not too tacit about those conditions. What are they?" "I hoped," she answered gently, "that you would not insist on my repeating them. You must understand, from what I have said, what they are." "I prefer that they should be stated as conditions." "Very well." Sally's voice was harder and colder. "As you like. You are not to take any steps whatever, even to reveal your existence to my mother and Charlie. Charlie is not to be allowed to play at your house--not to be allowed to enter it." "But, Sally, I may be unable to prevent that," he protested. "The house is not mine. I am only--only an employé and an underling. I will do what I can, but there is no use in promising what I can't perform." Sally smiled a little. It was something new for him to stick at promising. "Those are the conditions which I must make in self-defense," she said. "May I venture to ask what is offered on the other side?" She made a rapid calculation. "The most that I can offer you is seven hundred a year. I'd like to make it a thousand; but I have mother and Charlie to take care of, and I must pay Patty what she had let him have--without my knowledge," she added apologetically. "I agree to send you sixty dollars a month on those conditions." He was leaning back in his chair and spoke in his old manner, lightly. "And if the conditions are violated?" "The allowance stops," Sally replied promptly. "And further?"