Out of years of bitter experience she tried to convince the child of her error; tried, as she had striven for years to convince Sam Pardee. "Places are just the same," she said, bitterly, "and so are people, when you get to 'em." "They can't be," the child argued, stubbornly. "India and China and Spain and Africa." Milly Pardee had turned accusing eyes on her amused husband. "I hope you're satisfied." He shrugged. "Well, the kid's right. That's living." She disputed this, fiercely. "It is not. Living's staying in a place, and helping it grow, and growing up with it and belonging. Belong!" It was the cry of the rolling stone that is bruised and weary. Sam Pardee left for Oklahoma the following week. Milly Pardee refused to accompany him. It was the first time she had taken this stand. "If you go there, and like it, and want to settle down there, I'll come. I know the Bible says, 'Whither thou goest, I will go,' but I guess even What'shername would have given up at Oklahoma." For three years, then, Sam Pardee's letters reeked of oil: wells, strikes, gushers, drills, shares, outfits. It was early Oklahoma in the rough. This one was getting five hundred a day out of his well. That one had sunk forty thousand in his and lost out. "Five hundred what?" Maxine asked. "Forty thousand what?" "Dollars, I guess," Milly Pardee answered. "That's the way your father always talks. I'd rather have twenty-five a week, myself, and know it's coming without fail." "I wouldn't. Where's the fun in that?" "Fun! There's more fun in twenty-five a week in a pay envelope than in forty thousand down a dry well." Maxine was fifteen now. "I wish we could live with Father in Oklahoma. I think it's wrong not to." Milly Pardee was beginning to think so, too. Especially since her husband's letters had grown rarer as the checks they contained had grown larger. On his occasional trips back to Chicago he said nothing of their joining him out there. He seemed to have grown accustomed to living alone. Liked the freedom, the lack of responsibility. In sudden fright and resolve Milly Pardee sold the furnishings of the four-room flat, packed the peripatetic linen and silver, and joined a surprised and rather markedly unenthusiastic husband in Okoochee, Oklahoma. A wife and a fifteen-year-old daughter take a good deal of explaining on the part of one who has posed for three years as a bachelor. The first thing Maxine said as they rode (in a taxi) to the hotel, was: "But the streets are paved!" Then, "But it's all electric lighted with cluster lights!" And, in final and utter disgust, "Why, there's a movie sign that says, 'The Perils of Pauline.' That was showing at the Elite on Forty-third Street in Chicago just the night before we left." Milly Pardee smiled grimly. "Palestine's paved, too," she observed. "And they're probably running that same reel there next week."