already teeming in their minds? Would she show keen
interest, sympathy? Would she be able to keep her hold?

In the seat behind her mother, Betsy was sitting with Bruce in her lap,
looking over a picture book. Quietly Roger watched the girl.

"What are you going to be?" he asked. "A woman's college president, a
surgeon or a senator? And what will your mother think of you then?"

They changed cars, and on a train made up of antiquated coaches they wound
through a side valley, down which rushing and tumbling came the river that
bore Roger's name. He went into the smoking car, and presently George
joined him there. George did not yet smoke, (with his elders), but he had
bought a package of gum and he was chewing absorbedly. Plainly the lad was
excited over the great existence which he saw opening close ahead. Roger
glanced at the boy's broad shoulders, noticed the eager lines of his jaw,
looked down at his enormous hands, unformed as yet, ungainly; but in them
was a hungriness that caused a glow in Roger's breast. One more of the
family starting out.

"It's all going to depend on you," Roger gravely counseled. "Your whole
life will depend on the start you make. Either you're going to settle down,
like so many of your neighbors up there, or you're going to hustle, plan
out your day, keep on with your studies and go to college--the State
Agricultural College, I mean. In short, keep up to date, my boy, and become
in time a big figure in farming."

"I'm going to do it," George replied. His grandfather glanced again at his
face, so scowling, so determined. And a gleam of compassion and yearning
came for a moment in Roger's eyes. His heavy hand lay on George's knee.

"That's right, son," he grunted. "Make the family proud of you. I'll do all
I can to help you start. My business is picking up, thank God, and I'll be
able to back you now. I'll stay up here a good part of the summer. We've
both of us got a lot to learn--and not only from books--we want to remember
we've plenty to learn from the neighbors, too. Take old Dave Royce, for
instance, who when all is said and done has worked our farm for twenty odd
years and never once run me into debt."

"But, Gee!" demurred George. "He's so 'way out of date!"

"I know he is, son, but we've got to go slow." And Roger's look passed
furtively along the faces in the car. "We don't want to forget," he warned,
"that this is still New England. Every new idea we have we want to go easy
w