With the dessert they came to the fortunes of Felix—briefly alluded to before, but saved to the last for thorough consideration. They wanted to know all about Felix’s job, or rather all about how important a personage he had become. Felix’s shame in his good fortune gradually disappeared as he realized how immensely proud they all were of him—how they hugged his success to their hearts and enjoyed it. It was as though his good fortune were their own! 4 Rose-Ann liked them immensely, and that night reproached Felix for never having told her what lovely people they were. She entered into their domestic life, busied herself in the kitchen, and displayed qualities as a cook which he had never, in their studio-life, realized that she possessed. Their little studio-dinners had been masterpieces in their way. But to see Rose-Ann coming in flushed and triumphant from the kitchen with one dish after another of an old-fashioned country dinner in her hands was a new experience. Rose-Ann had smoked surreptitiously during her visit to her own home, merely wishing not to offend her aunt by any ostentatious indulgence of what that good lady regarded as a reprehensible practice; but here she did not smoke at all, even in their room at night. She did not want to do anything that Felix’s folks would not like, and was seriously concerned to secure their approval.... And she secured it—for who could resist Rose-Ann in her most buoyant mood? The visit had not been as disturbing as he had expected; and yet he was glad to go. “Felix,” said Rose-Ann, as they took the train back to Chicago, “I think I understand why we feel this way. It’s because all our lives—and this is the truth—we’ve scorned the older generation. And we are ashamed, coming back to face them, because we’ve nothing better—really—to show for our lives than they have.” “I wonder?” he said. “But we _can_ be happy in a way they knew nothing about, Felix. We can. And we shall!” 5 Then came their real vacation—a week’s walking trip in Wisconsin. The night-boat carried them from Chicago to Milwaukee; and from thence, early in the morning, dressed now in their oldest clothes, and with packs on their backs, they set out happily on foot. They stopped by the roadside to make themselves a breakfast of eggs and bacon, cooked in the ten-cent frying pan that dangled from one corner of Felix’s pack; pausing again at mid-day for a luncheon of blackberries and raspberries gathered in some bramble-patch. At night they reached, in a drizzling rain that had accompanied them for the last hour of their journey, a town with an ugly little hotel, where they could at least dry their clothes, eat a poor dinner with a good appetite, and sleep, dog-tired and happy, from ten o’clock till dawn.