He looked at her, tried to frame some polite reply, and found himself saying astonishingly: "Well, to be perfectly candid, that was rather my opinion." "And mine," she added quietly. She was calm in an instant. She looked at him almost sympathetically for a moment, and with a sudden gesture of satisfaction sat down in a chair opposite to his. "I'm glad you were frank with me, Mr. Speed," she said. "I can talk to anybody who's frank with me. It's your nature to confide in anybody who gives you the least encouragement, but it's not mine. I'm rather reticent. I remember once you talked to me a lot about your own people. Perhaps you thought it strange of me not to reciprocate." "No, I never thought of it then." "You didn't?--Well, I thought perhaps you might have done. Now that you've shown yourself candid I can tell you very briefly the sort of man my father was. He was a very dear old hypocrite, and I was very fond of him. He didn't feel half the things he said in his books, though I think he was honest enough to try to. He found a good thing and he stuck to it. After all, writing books was only his trade, and a man oughtn't to be judged entirely by what he's forced to do in order to make a living." He stared at her half-incredulously. She was astounding him more than ever. She went on, with a curious smile: "He was fifty-seven years old. When he died he was half-way through his eleventh book. It was to have been called 'How to Live to Three-Score-Years-and-Ten.' All about eating nuts and keeping the bedroom windows open at nights, you know." He wondered if he were expected to laugh. He stammered, after a bewildered pause: "How is all this going to effect you?--Will you leave Millstead?" She replied, with a touch in her voice of what he thought might have been mockery: "My father foresaw the plight I might be in some day and thoughtfully left me his counsel on the subject. Perhaps you'd like me to read it?" She went over to the bookcase and took down an edition-de-luxe copy of one of the Helping-Hand-Books. "Here it is--'How to Meet Difficulties'--Page 38--I'll read the passage--it's only a short one. 'How is it that the greatest and noblest of men and women are those against whom Fate has set her most tremendous obstacles?--Simply that it is good for a man or a woman to fight, good to find paths fraught with dire perils and difficulties galore, good to accept the ringing challenge of the gods! Nay, I would almost go so far as to say: lucky is that boy or girl who is cast, forlorn and parentless upon the world at a tender age, for if there be greatness in him or her at all, it will be forced to show itself as surely as the warm suns of May compel each flower to put forth her bravest splendour!' ... So now you know, Mr. Speed!"