! I've got a
business to--"

"You know perfectly well that Wetzler practically runs the whole
thing--or could, if you'd let him." Youth is cruel like that, when it
wants its way.

He did not even deny it. He seemed suddenly old. Pinky's heart smote her
a little. "It's just that you've got so used to this great barracks you
don't know how unhappy it's making you. Why, mother said to-day that she
hated it. I asked about the attic--the cleaning and all--and she said
she hated it."

"Did she say that, Paula?"

"Yes."

He dusted his hands together, slowly, spiritlessly. His eyes looked
pained and dull. "She did, h'm? You say she did?" He was talking to
himself, and thinking, thinking.

Pinky, sensing victory, left him. She ran lightly up the cellar stairs,
through the first-floor rooms, and up to the second floor. Her mother's
bedroom door was open.

A little mauve lamp shed its glow upon the tired woman in one of the
plump, gray-enamel beds. "No, I'm not sleeping. Come here, dear. What in
the world have you been doing in the cellar all this time?"

"Talking to dad." She came over and perched herself on the side of the
bed. She looked down at her mother. Then she bent and kissed her. Mrs.
Brewster looked incredibly girlish with the lamp's rosy glow on her face
and her hair, warmly brown and profuse, rippling out over the pillow.
Scarcely a thread of gray in it. "You know, mother, I think dad isn't
well. He ought to go away."

As if by magic the youth and glow faded out of the face on the pillow.
As she sat up, clutching her nightgown to her breast, she looked
suddenly pinched and old. "What do you mean, Pinky! Father--but he isn't
sick. He--"

"Not sick. I don't mean sick exactly. But sort of worn out. That
furnace. He's sick and tired of the thing; that's what he said to Fred.
He needs a change. He ought to retire and enjoy life. He could. This
house is killing both of you. Why in the world don't you close it up, or
sell it, and come to New York?"

"But we do. We did. Last winter--"

"I don't mean just for a little trip. I mean to live. Take a little
two-room apartment in one of the new buildings--near my studio--and
relax. Enjoy yourselves. Meet new men and women. Live! You're in a
rut--both of you. Besides, dad needs it. That rheumatism of his, with
these Wisconsin winters--"

"But California--we could go to California for--"

"That's only a stop-gap. Get your little place in New York all settled,
and