know. Anyway, I have mixed things up
hopelessly, given other people and myself an enormous amount of pain,
and wrecked my life and Jim's. And now, when I am thirty, I feel as if I
could begin to see light, begin to live--as if now, when nothing on
earth seems really important, I knew how to meet life!"

"Well, that's been my attitude for some years," Richie said, shifting
his lame leg again. "Of course I started in handicapped, which is a
great advantage--"

"Advantage? Oh, Richie!" Julia protested.

"Yes, it is, from one point of view," he insisted whimsically. "'Who
loses his life,' you know. Most boys and girls start off into life like
kites in a high wind without tails. There's a glorious dipping and
plunging and sailing for a little while, and then down they come in a
tangle of string and paper and broken wood. I had a tail to start with,
some humiliating deficiency to keep me balanced. No football and tennis
for me, no flirting and dancing and private theatricals. When Bab and
Ned were in one whirl of good times, I was working out chess problems to
make myself forget my hip, and reading Carlyle and Thoreau and Emerson.
Nobody is born content, Ju, and nobody has it thrust upon him; just a
few achieve it. I worked over the secret of happiness as if it was the
multiplication table. Happiness is the best thing in the world. It's
only a habit, and I've got it."

"_Is_ happiness the best thing in the world, Rich?" Julia asked wistfully.

"I think it is; real happiness, which doesn't necessarily mean a box at
the Metropolitan and a touring car," Richie said, smiling. "It seems to
me, to have a little house up here on the mountain, and to have people
here like me, and let me take care of them--"

"For nothing?" interposed Julia.

"Don't you believe it! I didn't write a cheque last month! Anyway, it
suits me. I have books, and letters, and a fire, and now and then a
friend or two--and now and then Julia and Anna to amuse me!"

"I'm happy, too," Julia said thoughtfully. "I realized it some time
ago--oh, a year ago! I feel just as you might feel, Rich, if you had
left some critical operation unfinished, or done in a wrong way, and
then gone back to do it over. I feel as if, in going back to first
principles, and doing what I could for my own people, I had 'trued' a
part of my life, if you can understand that! I had gone climbing and
blundering on, and reached a point where I couldn't help myself, but
they were just