"Where did that boy ever hear tell of Marcus Aurelius?" he wondered. "I don't know." She shook her head. "I don't understand him, he seems so strange and deep. He's not like a boy. You'd think, from talking with him, that he'd had university advantages." "It's blood," said the colonel, with the proud swelling of a man who can boast that precious endowment himself, "you can't keep it down. There's no use talking to me about this equality between men at the hour of birth; it's all a poetic fiction. It would take forty generations of this European scum such as is beginning to drift across to us and taint our national atmosphere to produce one Joe Newbolt! And he's got blood on only one side, at that. "But the best in all the Newbolt generations that have gone before seem to be concentrated in that boy. He'll come through this thing as bright as a new bullet, and he'll make his mark in the world, too. Marcus Aurelius. Well, bless my soul!" "Is it good?" she asked, stacking the books which she had selected on the table, standing with her hand on them, looking down at her smiling father with serious face. "I wouldn't say that it would be good for a young lady with forty beaus and unable to choose among them, or for a frivolous young thing with three dances a week----" "Oh, never more than two at the very height of social dissipation in Shelbyville!" she laughed. He lifted a finger, imposing silence, and a laugh lurked in his eyes. "No, I'd not say that such a light-headed creature would find much fodder in the ruminations and speculations and wise conclusions of our respected friend, Marcus," said he. "But a lad like Joe Newbolt, with a pair of eyes in his head like a prophet, will get a great deal of good, and even comfort, out of that book." "We must get it from Judge Maxwell," said she conclusively. "A strange lad, a strange lad," reflected the colonel. "So tall and strong," said she. "Why, from the way his mother spoke of him, I expected to see a little fellow with trousers up to his knees." She sat at the table and began cutting the leaves of a new magazine. Colonel Price lifted his paper, smoothed the crumples out of it, adjusted the focus of his glasses, and resumed reading the county news. They seemed contented and happy there, alone, with their fire in the chimney. Fire itself is a companion. It is like youth in a room. There was between them a feeling of comradeship and understanding which seldom lives where youth stands on one hand, age on the other. Years ago Alice's mother had gone beyond the storms and vexations of this life. Those two remaining of the little family had drawn together, closing up the space that her absence had made. There seemed no disparity of years, and their affection and fidelity had come to be a community pride.