“Banish them from my thoughts—” he looked at her critically. “Yes, it did you good. Now that I’ve set the example, why not follow it? Find a wilderness and build a house in the middle of it. At eighty-two you’ll have the critics wrangling as to whether you are your own daughter!” “Where shall I go?” she asked rather pointedly. “Aha, you want to poach on my reserve? You can’t do it! Take your own home town; isn’t it wild in spots? Seems to me you used to say so. Take twenty acres and bury yourself in it. Do the things we did those four weeks.” “Birge’s Corners!” So, he was to remain aloof. Birge’s Corners where she had returned in foolish triumph and ostentation—Dan and his son and Lorraine would be there, a harmonious trio! There was no place for her at Birge’s Corners. “I’ll consider it,” was all she said. “I came to tell you of Sam Sparling,” Hobart added in a gentler tone. “Evidently you have not heard?” She shook her head. “It happened while we were away. Had a nervous collapse—a stroke as well, and was battered up for keeps—all one side. Seems he had tossed his money around without thought and he was left stony broke. So they gave him a royal London benefit. The war paused long enough to honor the old chap. People came hours before the performance and waited on street curbs, brought their lunch and all that. A stall was as hard to get the day of the performance as a slice of the moon. Baxter says it was as great an event in its particular way as a coronation. They all turned out, great and small, old and young, to give Sam a valedictory. And now blush, Thurley. They even had your voice on a talking machine singing, ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’ and it was encored! There, doesn’t that set you up? I can’t tell you the exact programme, but every great artist available appeared. There was every one from a coster singer to the finest Shakespearean artist. And then the curtain rose for the finale—all the artists were in tiers and dressed in evening costume. Up high on a sort of throne sat our Sam, weak and not quite resigned yet to the truth of what had happened but gamey old Sam in a tuxedo and a gardenia in his buttonhole! The house burst into one sobbing roar—for he was _their_ Sam Sparling and they were going to prove it.” “What did he do? Oh, why weren’t we there?” Thurley cried. “First, the house sang the street gamin song Sam had sung when a lad, a catchy tune with a refrain of, ‘Let me hold your nag, sir, Or your little bag, sir, Anything you please to give— Oh—thank ’ee, sir—!’