There was something wistful in his tone. It stirred in Peter old loyalties, old responses, and he immediately wondered what Osmond wanted of him that was not expressed. Osmond had made no emotional demands upon him, as to his profession, but Peter always had a sense that his brother was sitting by, watching the boiling of the pot. This was a cheerful companionship when the pot was active; not now, as it cooled. He threw out a commonplace at random, from his uneasy consciousness. "Art isn't the biggest thing, old boy." "What is?" Now Peter rolled over again, and regarded him with glowing eyes. To Osmond, who was beginning to know his temperament better than he had known it in all the years of the lad's journey upon an upward track, that glance told of remembered phrases and a dominating personality that had made the phrases stick. "It's to give one man who works with his hands fresher air to breathe, fewer hours' work, a better bed." "You're an artist, Pete. Don't forget that." "I don't. But it isn't the biggest thing." "If you should paint a picture for that workingman to look at while he says his prayers? what then?" "You don't understand, Osmond," said the boy. "Labor! Labor is the question of the day." Osmond looked over at a field of seedlings where five men with bent backs were weeding and where he himself had been bending until now. He smiled a little. "I understand work, boy," he said gently. "Only I can't make hot distinctions. The workingman is as sacred to me as you are, and you are as sacred as the workingman." Peter was making little nosegays of grass and weeds, and laying them in methodical rows. "I can't paint, Osmond," he said abruptly. "These things are just crowding me." "What things?" "Capital. Labor." Osmond was silent a long time because he had too many things to say, all of them impossible. He felt hot tears in his eyes from a passion of revolt against the lad's wastefulness. He felt the shame of such squandering. To him, all the steps in the existence by which his own being had been preserved meant thrift and penury. He had conserved every energy. He had lived wholesomely, not only for months, but unremittingly for years. His only indulgences had been the brave temperate ones of air and sleep; and with their aid he had built up in himself the strength of the earth. And here was a creature whose clay was shot through with all the tingling fires of life, whose hand carried witchery, whose brain and eye were spiritual satellites, and he talked about painting by and by. "What a hold that man has on you!" he breathed involuntarily. Peter swept his little green nosegays into confusion and sat up. His eyes were brilliant. "Not the man," he said. "It's not the man. It's the facts behind him." Osmond's thought flew back to one night, and a girl's reckless picture of her father. It seemed now like a dream, yet it swayed him.