“I think one of the hardest things in the world,” he added, “is to be the man highest up! To have no one to whom you can go and dump your budget of woes and worries. Sometimes I long for a limited, brainless task, devoid of responsibility, sure of an uninterrupted lunch hour and a sick benefit.” Wondering over his words, Thurley reached her apartment to find a letter from Dan, hesitating before she opened it to wonder what had made him break the long and unexplained silence. Then she found her answer. Dan and Lorraine had a son! Dan had written Thurley to tell her he loved his wife as he had never loved any one before—not even Thurley. He had confessed to Lorraine his unloyal, wayward impulses and she had forgiven him. Their joy over Boy was so great that he wanted Thurley to be friends “with the family.” He ended almost naïvely, he hoped that she would understand and be happy for them all! So a new, engulfing envy, seconded by Polly’s little prophecy, beset her and during the winter and spring there was but one outcome, Thurley worked as she had never worked before, deaf to pleas about her health, bitter towards her admirers, aloof from Hobart and the others of the family, working without pausing, as if to drown the very whisper of the things nearest her heart. With the declaration of war came a multitude of surprises and readjustments regarding the family. To Thurley’s surprise her own interest was poised, critical as if the war were past history and not in the making. Miss Clergy was “not interested,” the Civil War had written itself for all time on her ghost heart. Mark was not going, he declared; Collin took the rôle of a misguided pacifist; Caleb plunged headlong into a war novel, “The Patriotic Burglar,” upon which he was to realize a fortune and retrieve some very asinine losses on the stock exchange. “The Patriotic Burglar” was to be called upon to pay his income tax, and how explain the income of a hundred thousand a year, partly obtained by the theft of Clementine Van Schaick’s pearl necklace! Now Clementine was a little volunteer worker at the income tax office—enter High Ike, the patriotic burglar, they meet—and here romance fairly skidded under the speed of Caleb’s typewriter. No soldier was to be without a copy, commissioned officers would be expected to carry five at least, and that was as far as the war affected him! Ernestine took the pessimistic view one would have expected of her. The country was going to the dogs, she declared, really mistaking her own intensive selfishness for the failure of the country.