"You see," he began slowly, "I feel more or less responsible myself for this outbreak. I can’t help thinking that if things had been between us as they ought to be between brothers Forrest would have brought his notions and troubles to me." "But you--but he----" Jane paused, surprised at the tone he took. "You have n’t been able to be with Forrest much, because--because he has been so active and lived such a different life----" "You are kind to excuse me, but I don’t see how that makes it any better. I could have shown interest and sympathy enough with his tastes and plans to have made him come naturally to me. I ’m the elder brother, and I have n’t been a brother, only a querulous, fault-finding, elderly relative, as if he were fourteen and I forty. He did come to you with his grievances against father, did n’t he?" Jane coloured a little as his eyes keenly questioned her. "Yes, though I did n’t want him to tell me, and would n’t listen to very much of it. I felt guilty to let him talk at all, but he was so----" "I ’m glad you did. If anybody could have given him advice that he would take it would have been you. I was pretty sure he had been to you, by the way I saw him fling over here just after he ’d had a bout with father." "He said something that day I feel as if your father ought to know, and I ’ve been wondering how I could let him know," and with this introduction, Jane told Murray all she had learned of Forrest’s inclination toward the army and its varied experiences, ending as gently as she could with the boyish threat of enlisting if he could not bring about his own appointment to West Point. Murray listened to her very soberly. "Father would veto the West Point proposition from the first word," he said, "merely because he has no notion of the sort of fascination the idea would have for a restless chap like my brother. So if Forrest asked him to let him go, I ’ve no doubt he refused him, and then--well, I can easily imagine Forrest carrying out his threat out of pure bravado. It gives us something to go by, anyhow. We can soon find out if he ’s had the folly to enlist. He may have the dash and bravery to do a gallant deed, to fight stoutly enough at a time of need, but the patience and endurance for the every-day army life----" He shook his head. "He’s only a boy, you know. You could n’t expect it of him." Just here Peter opened the little garden gate and came swinging in. "Hello!" he called, at sight of the pair under the maple-tree. "You two look cool and restful out there. May I join the picnic party when I ’ve freshened up a bit? A breakdown in the power at the factory sent fifty or sixty of us in our department home for a quarter-holiday." "That ’s luck for us, too!" called back Murray, cordially. Jane bent forward eagerly. "Do you mind Peter’s knowing?" she asked. "Pete’s so big and strong and--ingenious; he ’s like mother at knowing what to do."