She hesitated a moment before answering, then laughed lightly as she spoke. "You funny man--the magic of these mountains is getting in your blood! Of course not--they are just a very happy family who know a little more than most of us about what's really worth while in this world. Now tell me about your own nieces--Isobel, and that madcap Gyp, and little Tib." She knew well how fond John Westley was of these three girls and to talk of them brought to her a breath of what she had known at home before she had married Will Allan, the spring before. "Oh, they're as bad as ever," he said in a tone that implied exactly the opposite. "Isobel's growing more vain each day and Gyp more heedless, and Tibby's going to spoil her digestion if her mother doesn't make her eat less candy and more oatmeal. I haven't seen much of the youngsters since I was sick." "And Graham--poor boy, stuck in among those girls! He must be in long trousers now." "Graham can take care of himself," laughed the uncle. "Wish I had the four of them here with me! I wanted to bring them along but Dr. Hewitt said it'd be the surest way to the undertaker. They are a good sort but--sometimes, I wonder----" "You are an extraordinary uncle, to take the responsibility of your nieces and nephew the way you do." "I can't help it; I've lived with them since they were babies and it's just as though they were my own. And their father's away so much that I think their mother sort of depends on me. Sometimes I get a little bothered--they're having the very best schooling and all the things money can give young people and yet--there's a sort of shallowness possessing them that makes them--well, not value the opportunities they're having----" "You talk like a veritable schoolmaster," laughed Mrs. Allan, teasingly. "Have you forgotten that when Uncle Peter Westley left Highacres to the Lincoln School it made me trustee of the school? That's almost as bad as being the principal. And this year I'm going to take an active interest in the school, too. The doctor says I must have a 'diversity' of interests to offset the strain of making cement-mixers and I think to rub up against two hundred boys and girls will fill the bill, don't you? They've remodeled the building at Highacres this summer and completed one addition. There are twenty acres of ground, too, for outdoor athletics." "What a wonderful gift," mused Mrs. Allan, recalling the pile of stone and marble old Peter Westley had built in the outskirts of his city that could never have been of any possible use to himself because he had been a crusty old bachelor who hated to have anyone near him. Gossip had said that he had built it just because he wanted his house to cost more than any other house in the city; unworthy as his motive in building it might have been, he had forever ennobled the place when he had bequeathed it to the boys and girls of his city.