"I've often wondered what these people were like fifty years ago--living on top of the world, best farm land anywhere, fine old homes, lots of servants--nothing to do but enjoy life. Let it slip away from them, didn't they? Must not have known what they had." He had relaxed and was driving comfortably. And as though wrapped in a mist of his own musing he continued, his eyes fixed on the road before him, "I've often thought that if I ever got to the point where I could afford it I would get me one of those old places--lot of land--stock it up well, fix up the house. I'd like to leave something like that to my family." He chuckled. "They might not appreciate it as much as I do, however." "They might," she replied. "They might have just as hard a time trying to keep it as--as we have. Conditions might change again in the next fifty years." He turned and smiled at her. "Hadn't thought of that." The crow's feet were thick about his eyes. "Who was the boy?--the one you were with the other night." Mary Louise flushed in spite of herself. "Joe--Joe Hooper. You've heard me speak of him." "Oh, yes. Lives in Bloomfield, doesn't he?" "He did. Works here in town now--out at Bromley's." He made no further reply, but somehow she felt an unuttered conviction, on the part of the man there beside her, of Joe's loss of heritage. And yet a certain compunction prevented her from making any explanation--that it was not Joe's fault. There was a sort of sacred inviolability about it. A hot little wave of feeling swept over her. She had treated Joe miserably. She had yielded to her feelings like a child. She ought to have been good sport enough to hide what she had felt. But she hadn't. She was a snob. She had hoped to conceal that she was not their sort--Joe and Mr. Mosby. In a sense, she had been going back on her own people. As if she were trying to pass them--trying to keep up with the procession. And yet that was exactly what she was doing. But to show it! The straight level path of the boulevard came abruptly to an end and the road diverged to the left and mounted swiftly, skirting the incline of a white, chalky hill densely covered with a tangle of scrub oak, buckeye, cedar, and much underbrush. The slanting rays of the sun were shut off abruptly as by a shutter and they rolled between stretches of shade that were mistily fragrant and cool. Even the upper air currents in the spaces above the road, up toward the sky, seemed shadowy and unharried by the fierceness of the passing sunlight. The motor settled down to the business of climbing, and once Claybrook turned to her with a look of appreciation. "Some park, this."