For the past six or seven years he had spent some five thousand per annum on himself, the rest on certain charities and what he lumped together under the convenient head of “Sundries.” It was a word which covered among other things numerous presents and treats for June and Rosamund. “Sundries” had consumed a great deal of ready money, nearly as much as Allen’s diamond bracelets and theater suppers, and the Colonel sighed as he realized they must suffer curtailment. The private charities were represented by a few written words with an affixed line of figures: “Carter’s girl at Convent;” “Joe’s boy,” “G. T.’s widow.” When the figures were added up they made a formidable sum. The Colonel looked at it for another period of frowning cogitation. Then on the edge of the paper he put down the items of his own private account. There was only one which was large--the rent of the sunny suite on the Kearney Street corner. Through that item he drew his pen. The next time he dined with the Allens he told them that he was going to move. He had found his old rooms too large and he had decided to take a smaller suite in the Traveler’s Hotel. The girls stared in blank surprise. Allen looked at him with quick, sidelong curiosity. He wondered at the move. He knew that Parrish had been hard hit, but he still must have enough left to live on comfortably in the style he had maintained since his return from the war. The Traveler’s Hotel was a come-down--a place on the built-out land below Montgomery Street, respectable enough, but far different from the luxurious rooms on the Kearney Street corner. The girls were amazed, distressed, had endless questions as to why Uncle Jim should do such a strange thing. He laughed and parried their queries. Had they forgotten that he was a pioneer, who had slept under the stars on the American River in forty-nine? In those days the Traveler’s Hotel would have been regarded as the acme of luxury. “And why,” he said, “should the old man to-day turn up his nose at what would have been magnificence to the young man in forty-nine?” During this winter of storm and stress June stood on the edge of the excitement looking on. The selfishness of a purely individual sorrow held her back from that vivid interest and participation that would once have been hers. She was tender and loving to the Colonel, and she bore patiently with the moody irritation that often marked her father’s manner, but for the most part she gave to the matters that once would have been of paramount interest, only a shadow of her old blithe attention.