And as though the matter were settled, which Marjorie knew it was, Hugh Benton, in his usual abrupt way, resumed his interrupted romp with his son and heir and the little princess of the house of Benton. Cypress Avenue was the rather imposing name that the dwellers on that thoroughfare in Atwood chose to use in referring to their place of residence. Why Cypress, though, was a question that was bound to present itself to the casual visitor. There were maple trees in plenty, a few dogwoods and scattered shrubs of nondescript nomenclature that grew without regard to any scheme of city gardening either inside or outside the flagged sidewalks at their own sweet will. But cypresses—stay! Yes, there was a cypress if one chose to go that far to look for it,—away out at the end of the street at the entrance to the Forest Home Cemetery, beyond the more pretentious homes of brick and concrete that housed such aristocracy as the Birminghams and the Wallaces. Mr. Birmingham was president of the Atwood Bank, and Edgar Wallace made sufficient as the town’s chief merchant to clothe his wife in moleskin. On Cypress Avenue, too, lived the Moultons, the Carvers, the Hopewells, coal and wood, hardware and grain barons and baronesses of their own small world. It was something to live on Cypress Avenue, and the Bentons, in building their shingle bungalow had felt a glow of pride in taking their place with the elect of their chosen place of residence. They were farther downtown, though, within such a short distance of Depot Avenue, the main street and business district, that they could easily see the lights of the Princess, the movie theater, flash on each night, and could tell to a nicety the time of night by seeing when Oscar Merriman, the depot agent and telegrapher, turned out the electrics preparatory to closing up and going to his own home far across the railroad tracks in Sandy Hill. That the farmers coming and going from the outlying districts chose to speak of Depot Avenue as the main road, and of Cypress Avenue as the short cut, in no wise disturbed the residents of that avenue. They were quite assured that their chief residential street compared most favorably with that of any street in any town the size of Atwood.