"You'd better not remind her of anything she said to you over there," he allowed himself to advise. "Things were pretty strenuous then, Dick, don't you remember? We've come back to a"--his voice failed him as he thought how base a time they had returned to--"a different sort of thing altogether. I'm an old fellow, according to you, but there's one thing I know. You won't get a girl by 'flying off the handle,' as Charlotte would say. Honest, old boy, when you have these fits of yours, you don't seem, according to the prophet of your generation, as impressive as usual." "Who is the prophet of my generation?" put in Dick sourly, as if that were the issue between them. "G. B. S., I've understood," said Raven mildly. "Don't I recall your telling me he was the greatest ever, at least since Aristophanes?" "Oh, cut it," said Dick, whose gods were subject to change. "Cut it by all means. But there is a thing or two I'd like your vote on. Your mother now: what's your impression of her plans about staying along here? Think she's game to tough it out as long as I do?" "She'll stay as long as Nan does." Dick was frowning into the fire, and Raven doubted whether one of his admonitory words had sunk in. "I had an idea I could go back to town to-morrow morning and wire her I'd broken my leg or something. But Nan's got to go with me." "Nan will do as she pleases," said Raven. He rose from his chair disgusted with young love so unpicturesque and cub-like. "Turn off the lights, will you, when you go?" And he went off to bed. But in the morning, when he came down, Dick met him at the foot of the stairs. It was a changed Dick. His lip was trembling. Raven concerned, yet unable to deny himself a flippant inward comment, thought the boy looked as if he'd been saying his prayers. "She's gone, Jack," said Dick. In stress of intimacy, he often dropped the prefatory title. "Gone?" Raven's mind flew to Tira. "Where?" "Back to Boston. Walked to the station. Took the milk train. Charlotte says she simply walked out and said she wasn't coming back." "Your mother or--you don't mean Nan?" "Nan, yes. Do you see mother walking five miles to a train?" But if Dick was unsettled, this was not his surly mood of the night before. "If I drove her away"--he began, and then ended with an appealingness to be remembered of the Dick who had not been nettled by life, "Jack, I wish she wouldn't." "I'll ask Charlotte," said Raven. "Your mother out yet? No? Well, don't bring her into it." He went off to the kitchen where Charlotte was just setting little silver pots on a damask-covered tray. She glanced up at him, not absently, because Charlotte always seemed so charged with energy that she could turn from one task and give full attention to another. "For Mrs. Powell," she explained, setting her hands to the tray, as if she expected him to make whatever remark he would without delaying her. "She's havin' her breakfast in bed." "Dick tells me----" he began, and she nodded.