“Everything’s curious, though, for the matter o’ that,” Lucius added. And without looking at his cousin—without needing to look at her, to understand the deadliness of her silence—he smoked unconcernedly. “Yes, sir, it’s all curious; and _we’re_ all curious,” he continued, permitting himself the indulgence of a reminiscent chuckle. “You know I believe my father and mother got to be rather at outs about me—one thing and another, goodness knows what!—and it was years before they came together and found a real sympathy between them again. Truth is, I suspect where people aren’t careful, their children have about twice as much to do with driving ’em apart as with drawing ’em together—especially in the case of an only child. I really do think that if _I_ hadn’t been an only child my father and mother might have been——” A sibilant breath, not a word and not quite a hiss, caused Lucius to pause for a moment, though not to glance in the direction of the lips whence came the sound. He appeared to forget the sentence he had left incomplete; at all events he neglected to finish it. However, he went on, composedly: “Some of my aunts tell me I was the worst nuisance they ever knew. In fact, some of ’em go out of their way to tell me that, even yet. They never could figure out what was the matter with me—except that I was spoiled; but I never meet Aunt Mira Hooper on the street at home, to this day, that she doesn’t stop to tell me she hasn’t learned to like me, because she got such a set against me when I was a child—and I meet her three or four times a week! She claims there was _some_ kind of a little tragedy over me, in our house, every day or so, for years and years. She blames _me_ for it, but Lord knows it wasn’t my fault. For instance, a lot of it was my father’s.” “What did he do?” asked John. Lucius chuckled again. “The worst he did was to tell me stories about Indians and pioneer days. Sounds harmless enough, but father was a good story-teller, and that was the trouble. You see, the foundation of nearly all romance, whether it’s Indian stories or fairy-stories—it’s all hero and villain. Something evil is always just going to jump out of somewhere at the hero, and the reader or the listener is always the hero. Why, _I_ got so I wouldn’t go into a darkened room, even in the daytime! As we grow older we forget the horrible visions we had when we were children; and what’s worse, we forget there’s no need for children to have ’em. Children ought to be raised in the _real_ world, not the dream one. Yes, sir, I lay all my Aunt Mira Hooper’s grudge against me to my father’s telling me stories so well and encouraging me to read the classics and——” “Lucius,” Mrs. Thomas spoke in a low voice, but in a tone that checked him abruptly. “Yes, Jennie?” “Don’t you think that’s enough?” “I suppose it is tiresome,” he said. “Too much autobiography. I was just rambling on about——” “You meant me!” she cried. “You, Jennie?”