"But Trude dear, I feel like a deserter! To think that I who used to preach the loudest of our duty to Dad's memory and the tradition of his genius should be the first to break from it! I believe now that Sidney, that morning she had her little flare-up and we promised her the Egg, broke down restraints that have been holding us all. Certainly, ever since then, rebellious thoughts have been growing in me. I have come to see our lives differently and to believe that we've been silly. We thought we had to go on living the same kind of lives we led when Dad was with us, that we had to submerge our own personalities to his because his was so great. Maybe the League frightened us into thinking that; they bought us or thought they did. But Trude, they _couldn't_! They can buy the house and the atmosphere and Dad's coat and chair and pens and all that but they can't buy Dad's children! Dad wouldn't want it that way. Why, we are his greatest creation and our lives are his gift to us and he would want us to make something fine of those gifts--something that would be our own. Sidney said that she wanted to be something besides Joseph Romley's daughter and that was simply her real self crying for escape. I hope the dear child has found it in a happy summer and has had her fill of the adventure she craved. "Happy as I am I cannot bear thinking of leaving you with the responsibilities of Vick and Sidney and the League, except that you have always carried the responsibility anyway. But it seems too much for even shoulders like yours. So I've been making schemes. Vick will be sure to marry soon, bless her pretty face, and then with my salary and the royalties we can send Sidney away to school and you can plan something for yourself just as I have done. It's a wonderful feeling, Trude, I am just beginning to live! I don't mind a bit now thinking of being an old maid--" Trude folded the letter, suddenly conscious of her listeners. Sidney caught at it as though to make certain it had actually been written by her sister Isolde. "Think of it. Trude! A hope-to-die secretary with a salary! I do believe it's old Issy who's going to laugh last." "What do you mean Sidney?" asked Trude; but she did not wait for Sidney to answer. Her thoughts were elsewhere. "I believe _Issy_ has torn a veil from us all. We _were_ silly. We held to the ties of Dad as a poet and were losing the sweet real ones of him as a father. Of course he'd want us--the father part of him--to live our own lives, make of them what we can--" "_Would he?_" cried Dugald Allan from his corner. And at the sound of his voice Trude started, her face flushing crimson. "Then, Trude Romley, will you please withdraw that answer you gave me out on the breakwall? It can't hold good now." "Oh, _hush_! Don't! Not here--now--" Sidney, alert to some deeper meaning, took up his question. "What answer?" she demanded.