oo bad," said Ted with ready sympathy. He looked straight
across the table at Richard out of sea-blue eyes shaded by very heavy
black lashes, which, it struck Richard quite suddenly, were much like
another pair which he had had one very limited opportunity of observing.
The boy also possessed a heavy thatch of coal-black hair, a lock of
which was continually falling over his forehead and having to be thrust
back. "Because father says," Ted went, on, "it's a whole lot better for
children to be brought up together, so they will learn to be polite to
each other. I'm the youngest, so I'm most like an only child. But, you
see," he added hurriedly, "the older ones weren't allowed to give up to
me, and I had to be polite to them, so perhaps"--he looked so in earnest
about it that Richard could not possibly laugh at him--"I won't turn out
as badly as some youngest ones do."

There was really nothing priggish about this statement, however it may
sound. And the next minute the boy had turned to a subject less
suggestive of parental counsels. He launched into an account of his
elder brother Louis's prowess on the football fields of past years,
where, it seemed, that young man had been a remarkable right tackle. He
gave rather a vivid account of a game he had witnessed last year,
talking, as Richard recognized, less because he was eager to talk than
from a sense of responsibility as to the entertainment of his guest.

"But he won't play any more," he added mournfully. "He took his degree
last year and he's in father's office now, learning everything from the
beginning. He's just a common clerk, but he won't be long," he asserted
confidently.

"No, not long," agreed Richard. "The son of the chief won't be a common
clerk long, of course."

"I mean," explained Ted, buttering a hot roll with hurried fingers,
"he'll work his way up. He won't be promoted until he earns it; he
doesn't want to be."

Richard smiled. The boy's ideals had evidently been given a start by
some person or persons of high moral character. He was considering the
subject in some further detail with the lad when the dining-room door
suddenly opened and the owner of the black-lashed blue eyes, which in a
way matched Ted's, came most unexpectedly in upon them. She was in
street dress of dark blue, and her eyes looked out at them from under
the wide gray brim of a sombrero-shaped hat with a long quill in it, the
whole effect of which was to give her the breezy look