The two children were utterly absorbed. The boy was half a head taller than the girl, heavier, sturdier, of a startling beauty. There was a stubborn, much reviled wave in his bronze hair and his eyes were a dark hazel flecked with black. His skin was bronze, too, bronzed by many Catalina summer and winter swims at Ocean Park. It made his teeth seem very white and flashing. The window was open to the soft Southern California air, and the voices came across to the watchers. "_Hold_ it!" "I _am_ holding it!" A handsome man of forty came up the tree-shaded street, not quite steadily, and turned into the King's walk. His hat was pulled low over his eyes and the collar of his coat was turned up in spite of the mildness of the day. He nodded to the boy and girl as he went past them and on into the house. "_Again!_" said Mrs. Lorimer, tragically. "That's the second time this week!" "Rough on the kid," said her husband. "See him now." Jimsy King had turned his head and was following his father's slow progress up the steps and across the porch and into the house. "Be in in a minute, Dad!" he called after him. "Loyal little beggar. I saw him steering him up Broadway one morning, just at school time. Pluck." Honor had looked after James King, the elder, too, and then at his son, and then at the football in her hands again. "Hurry up," she commanded. "Pull it tighter! _Tighter!_ Do you call that pulling?" Inexorably she got his attention back to the subject in hand. "That makes it all the worse," said Mrs. Lorimer. "Of course they're only children--babies, really--but I couldn't have anything.... It's bad blood, Stephen. I _couldn't_ have my child interested in one of the 'Wild Kings'!" "Well, you won't have, if you're wise. Let 'em alone. Let 'em lace footballs on the front lawn ... and they won't hold hands on the side porch! Why, woman dear, like the well-known Mr. Job, the thing you greatly fear you'll bring to pass! Shut her up in a girls' school--even the best and sanest--and you'll make boys suddenly into creatures of romance, remote, desirable. Don't emphasize and underline for her. She's as clean as a star and as unself-conscious as a puppy! Don't hurry her into what one of those English play-writing chaps calls--Granville Barker, isn't it?--Yes,--_Madras House_--'the barnyard drama of sex.... Male and female created He them ... but men and women are a long time in the making!'" The lacing of the football was finished. The boy lifted his head and looked soberly at the door through which his father had entered, not quite steadily. Then he drew a long breath, threw back his shining bronze head, said something in a low tone to the girl, and ran into the house. Honor Carmody got to her feet and stood looking after him, the odd mothering look in her square child's face. She stood so for long moments, without moving, and her mother and her stepfather watched her.