Whether Mills had referred to his temporary residence in Laconia merely to show how unimportant and incidental it was in his life remained a question. But Bruce felt that if Mills could so lightly touch upon it, he himself was equal to gliding over it with like indifference. Mills asked with a smile whether Gardner’s Grove was still in existence, that having been a favorite picnic ground, an amateurish sort of country club where the Laconians used to have their dances. The oak trees there were the noblest he had ever seen. Bruce expressed regret that the grove was gone.... Mills was shrewd; and Bruce was aware that the finely formed head across the table housed a mind that carefully calculated all the chances of life even into the smallest details. He wondered whether he had borne himself as well as Mills in the ordeal. The advantage had been on Mills’s side; it was his house, his table. Possibly he had been waiting for some such opportunity as this to sound the son of Marian Storrs as to what he knew--hoped perhaps to surprise him into some disclosure of the fact if she had ever, in a moment of weakness or folly, spoken of him as other than a passing acquaintance. “We’ll go down to the billiard room to smoke,” Mills remarked at the end of the dinner. “We’ll have our coffee there.” Easy chairs and a davenport at one end of the billiard room invited to comfort. On the walls were mounted animal heads and photographs of famous horses. “Leila doesn’t approve of these works of art,” said Mills, seeing Bruce inspecting them. “She thinks I ought to move them to the farm. They do look out of place here. Sit where you like.” He half sprawled on the davenport as one who, having dined to his satisfaction and being consequently on good terms with the world, wishes to set an example of informality to a guest. Bruce wondered what Mills did on evenings he spent alone in the big house; tried to visualize the domestic scene in the years of Mrs. Mills’s life. “You see Shepherd occasionally?” Mills asked when the coffee had been served. “The boy hasn’t quite found himself yet. Young men these days have more problems to solve than we faced when I was your age. Everything is more complicated--society, politics, everything. Maybe it only seems so. Shep’s got a lot of ideas that seem wild to me. Can’t imagine where he gets them. Social reforms and all that. I sometimes think I made a mistake in putting him into business. He might have been happier in one of the professions--had an idea once he wanted to be a doctor, but I discouraged it. A mistake, perhaps.”