The neighbors said, "How do you do, Mr. King? Like summer, really, isn't it?" and looked hastily away. One never could be sure of finding him quite himself. Even if he walked quite steadily he might not be able to talk quite steadily, but he was always a King, always sure of his manner, be he ever so unsure of his feet or his tongue. He had been worse since his wife died, when the boy was still a toddler. She was a slim, sandy-haired Scotch girl with steady eyes and a prominent chin, who had married him to reform him, and the neighbors were beginning to think she was in a fair way to compass it when she died. No one had ever been able to pity Jeanie King; she had been as proud as the pale lady who came with the first "Wild King" from Virginia. There was that about the Kings; it had to be granted that their women always stuck; they must have had compensating traits and graces. No King wife ever gave up or deserted save by death, and no King wife ever wept on a neighbor's shoulder. And now they had all wandered back to Virginia or up to Alaska or down to Mexico, and there was not an uncle or cousin of his tribe left in Los Angeles for Jimsy King; only his bad, beloved father, coming home at noon in rumpled evening dress, but wearing it better and more handily, for all that, than any other man on the block. It was agreed that there was no chance for Jimsy to escape the heritage of his blood. People were kind about it, but very firm. "If his mother had lived he might have had a chance, the poor boy," Mrs. Lorimer would sigh, "but with that father, and that home life, and that example----" "My dear," said Stephen Lorimer, "can't you see what you are doing? By _you_ I mean the neighborhood. You are holding his heredity up like a hoop for him to jump through!"