The dog whined with delight at the voice and jumped up to lick the strong tense hand held down to him. “Do you know, old chap,” his master continued, “I’ve been handing myself a collection of cold marble truths in the last few weeks? I’ve been the prize dolt of the whole show, and you ought to have thrown me over long ago. You’ve probably realized it all along, but it has never dawned on me until lately. I’ve worn the blue ribbon so long I’d come to think it was a decoration. All my life I’ve been just another of those well-meaning, brainless young idiots who have never done a blessed thing that’s the slightest value to anybody else. Well, Chum, we’re through. We’re going to begin doing something for ourselves, if it’s only raising cabbages! And we’re going to stand it without any baby-aching—the nurse never held our noses when we took our castor-oil!” It was folded down, that old bright page. Finis had been written to the rose-colored chapter. And even as he told himself, he was conscious of a new rugged something that had been slowly dawning [Pg 35]within him, a sense of courage, even of zest, and a furious hatred of the self-pity that had wrenched him even for a moment. He turned from the window, picked up his letters, and followed by the dog, went slowly up another flight to his room. [Pg 36] CHAPTER V THE LETTER He tore open the letters abstractedly: the usual dinner-card or two, a tailor’s spring announcement, a chronic serial from an exclamatory marble-quarrying company, a quarterly statement of a club house-committee. The last two missives bore a nondescript look. One was small, with the name of a legal firm in its corner. The other was largish, corpulent and heavy, of stout Manila paper, and bore, down one side, a gaudy procession of postage stamps proclaiming that it had been registered. “What’s in that, I wonder?” he said to himself, and then, with a smile at the unmasculine speculation, opened the smaller envelope. “Dear Sir,” began the letter, in the most uncompromisingly conventional of typewriting: “Dear Sir: “Enclosed please find, with title-deed, a memorandum opened in your name by the late John Valiant some years before his death. It was his desire that the services indicated in connection with this estate should continue till this date. We hand [Pg 37]you herewith our check for $236.20 (two hundred and thirty-six dollars and twenty cents), the balance in your favor, for which please send receipt, “And oblige, “Yours very truly, “Emerson and Ball. “(Enclosure)” He turned to the memorandum. It showed a sizable initial deposit against which was entered a series of annual tax payments with minor disbursements credited to “Inspection and care.” The tax receipts were pinned to the account.