So Jim Dyckman, unconscious that he was following in Kedzie's footsteps, walked miserably on his way. He had no place to go to but the finest yacht in the harbor. He had no money to depend on but a few millions of his own and the Pelion plus Ossa fortunes of his father and mother and their relatives--a mere sierra of gold mountains. He drifted down to the landing-place and went out to his yacht in a hackney launch. He was received at her snowy sides as if he were the emperor of somewhere come to visit one of his rear admirals. He went up the steps as if he were a school-boy caught playing hooky and going up-stairs to play the bass drum to his mother's slipper. His mother was on the shade-deck, reclining. The big white wicker lounge looked as if a small avalanche had fallen on it. From the upturned points of her white shoes back to her white hair she was a study in foreshortening that would have interested a draftsman. Spread out on a huge wicker arm-chair sat Jim's father, also all white, except for his big pink hands and his big pink face. It seemed that he ought to have been smoking a white cigar. As a matter of fact, he had sat so still that half the weed was ash. When the two moved to greet Jim there was a mighty creaking of wicker. There was another when Jim spilled his own great weight into a chair. A steward in white raised his eyebrows inquiringly and Jim nodded the eighth of an inch. It was the equivalent of ordering a drink. Dyckman senior turned to Dyckman seniora and said, “Enter Hamlet in the graveyard! Where's the skull, my boy, where's the skull?” “Let the child alone,” Mrs. Dyckman protested. “It's too hot for fooling. You might kiss your poor mother, though. No, don't get up, just throw me one.” Jim rose heavily, went to her, bent far down, kissed her, and would have risen again, but her big arms encompassed his neck and held him, uncomfortably, till he knelt by her side and laid his head on her bosom. He felt exceedingly foolish, but nearer to comfort than he had been for a long while. He wished that he might be a boy again in his mother's arms and be altogether content and carefree as he had been there. As if children were content and carefree! Great Heavens! do they not begin to squirm and kick before they are born? Mrs. Dyckman was suffocated a trifle by his weight and her own and her corsets, but her heart ached for him somewhere down deep and she whispered: “Can't he tell his mother what he wants? Maybe she can get it for him.” He laughed bitterly and extricated himself from her clasp, patted her fat arm, and turned away. His father jealously seized his sleeve. “Anything serious, old man? You know I'm here.”