A boy in his sixteenth year can be a considerable pillar in a household. I had somehow overlooked Randolph in that rôle. Perhaps I had been inclined to treat Laura’s children too much as nestlings all, wholly dependent upon me? I experienced a thrill of pleasurable surprise in the boy’s words and manner. He had said no word concerning his father, had asked no disconcerting questions. He merely desired to help. "But of course there is somebody looking for Alicia," I informed him. "Yes, I know, Uncle Ranny—a policeman! What does a policeman know about girls like Alicia? I—we talked a lot, she and I," he stammered. "I have a hunch I could sort of tell what she’d _think_ of doing if she left home. Let me have a try at it, Uncle Ranny, please. It’ll only be a few nickels in carfare." "Certainly, my boy," I put my arm about his shoulders. To frustrate young intentions simply because they are young has never appealed to me as wisdom. "Come into town with me by all means. I am certain Alicia will come back"—he could not know the effort this easy answer was costing me—"but there is no reason why you shouldn’t try to find her." I had thrown off any mask of secrecy with all excepting Jimmie. Insincerity is a difficult habit to wear. "Thanks, Uncle Ranny," he answered with suppressed jubilation, and for the first time in our common history I suddenly felt that I had a companion in Randolph—that he was growing up. When he left me at the station, charged with avuncular instructions that he was to telephone me at various times of the day and that he was to lunch with me if he could, I had a tender impulse to embrace this lad, Laura’s first-born, before all the concourse. But I knew he would be shamed to death by such a demonstration. So I tapped him on the shoulder and we parted grinning to keep each other in heart. I experienced a fleeting intuition that Alicia would be restored to us, but I expected nothing at all from Randolph’s romantic quest for her. My heart went out to the boy as I saw him merge and lose himself in the crowd; I felt very tenderly not only toward those of my flesh, but to all young things facing the hurly-burly of this oddly jumbled sphere. I was becoming an ogler in my old age. Every young girl I saw in the streets, in cars, at crossings, I scrutinized searchingly, with painful leapings of the heart, when any of them in the slightest particular resembled Alicia. And the melancholy truth came to me that you can build a life to any design you please, but only a miracle will keep it intact. Visconti was in the office when I arrived and he was kindness itself when he saw my face. "_Caro mio!_" he grasped my hand. "Something serious?"