“I want to be a farmer—a gentleman farmer. I want to buy an estate or small farm not far from New York but near this place where we have always been so happy. I’ll hire men to do the rough part of the work, but I want to keep myself busy and occupied overseeing things. I never did like to be idle. You know that. Then we can have that nurse for the children so that we can run up to New York occasionally for a few days and have all the theaters and opera we want. Then when the youngsters are old enough to attend school, I should like to send them to a public school. Some of our greatest men and women have been educated in them, you must recall. I don’t believe in finishing schools—never did—they’d make Elinor a snob. As for colleges, unless a boy is absolutely sincere in wanting to be a professional man, what good would they do him? Howard would just get in with the idle rich, which in the end would surely spell disaster for him morally and financially. You see, my dear, I want my daughter to be a _real_ woman like her mother; and my son, all I ask is that he be a man!” He stopped, musing. Had Hugh Benton not been so interested in his own dream, he would have seen on the face of his wife more varying emotions than he had ever seen since he had known her. They would have been new to him. Disappointment she showed, disapproval, injury, then, swiftly following, a real indignation in the narrowing to pin points of the pupils of her wide eyes. But when she spoke, it was in a meek, cool voice. “And what about your wife?” Hugh laughed. “Why, everything for my wife,” he said. “You’ll be chatelaine of it all.” He glanced up at her and stopped, fork suspended in midair at the strange expression he saw. “Why, Marjorie, little girl,” he queried, earnestly, “what’s wrong? What is it, dear?” Marjorie’s foot tapped impatiently on the bare floor of the kitchen-dining room. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Nothing,” she declared, without apparent interest. “Nothing at all—except that after all these five years of privation and hard work, now when you have prospects of actually becoming wealthy, you sit there and calmly propose _to bury me on a farm_!” The scorn in the utterance of the last words brought a look of surprise, quickly followed by pain to the eyes of Hugh Benton. He spoke, slowly, contritely. “I suppose I’m selfish, like all men,” he said sadly, “but, someway, because I’ve been so happy myself, I’ve never known before that the years we’ve been married had been a burden to you.” Then the real Marjorie Benton came to the surface. She reached over to grab his hand convulsively. “I’m the one to be forgiven, dear,” she begged contritely. “Oh, I never meant that—indeed I didn’t—you know I’ve been happy. Oh, I didn’t realize what I was saying!” She forced back the tears.