"You know you are nothing but a small boy, Jim," Julia said one day, "just a sweet, happy kid! You were a spoiled and pitied little boy, with your big eyes and your velvet suits and your patent leathers; you loved every one--every one loved you; you had your allowance, you were born to be a surgeon, and chance made your guardian a doctor--" "I fell down on my exams," Jim submitted meekly. "And there was a fellow at college who said I bored him!" "Oh, dearest," Julia said, beginning to laugh at his rueful face, "and are those the worst things that ever happened to you?" "About," said Jim, enjoying the consolatory little kiss she gave him. "And your youngness baffles me," pursued Julia thoughtfully. "You're ten years older than I am, you've been able to do a thousand things I never did, you're a rising young surgeon, and yet--and yet sometimes there's a sort of level--level isn't the word!--a sort of _positive_ youth about you that makes me feel eighty! It's just as if you had been born everything you are, ready made! When you have to straighten a child's hip, you push your hair back like a nice little kid, and say to yourself, 'Sure--I can do that!' You seem as pleased and surprised as any one else when everything comes out right!" "Well, gosh! I never can put on any lugs!" said James, rumpling his hair in penitential enjoyment. "I have to learn things so _hard_," Julia mused, "they dig down right into the very soul of me--" "You're implying that I'm shallow," said the doctor sternly. "You think I'm a pampered child of luxury, but I'm not! I just think I'm a pretty ordinary fellow who came in for an extraordinary line of luck. I would have made a pretty good bluff at supporting myself in any sort of life; as it was, when I was a youngster, growing up, I used to say to myself, 'You think you're going to be rich, but half the poor men in the world are born rich, anything may happen!' However, I enjoyed things just the same, and I went to medical college just because Dad said every man ought to be able to support himself. Then I got interested in the thing, and old Fox was a king to me, and told me I ought to go in for surgery. My own father was a surgeon, you know. Some hands are just naturally better for it than others, and his were, and mine are. And at twenty-five I came of age, and found that my money was pretty safely fixed, and that Dad was kind of counting on my going in with him. So there you are! Things just come my way; as I say, I'd have been satisfied with less, but I've got in the habit of taking my luck for granted." "And some people, like--well, like my grandmother, for instance, just get in the habit of bad luck," Julia said, with a sigh. "And some, like myself," she added, brightening, "are born in the bad belt, and push into the good! And we're the really lucky ones! I shall never put on a fresh frock, or go downtown with you to the theatre, without a special separate joy!"