re of money, she
might have beckoned better from nearly any direction; that he was
curious why she had told the man Morton first of all.

They rolled in at the gate. There he had stood, and there she, when she
had set her dog on him. Then around the curve to the great house and in
at the front door with an aging Simpson and a younger servant to compete
for his bag and his coat and hat. How Simpson scraped--Simpson who had
ordered him to go where he belonged, to the back door. What was the
matter with him that he couldn't experience the elation with which the
moment was crowded?

Mrs. Planter met him with her serene manner of one beyond human
frailties. You couldn't expect her to go back and remember. Such a
return to her would be beyond belief.

"You've not been kind to us, Mr. Morton. You've never been here before."

And that night she had walked through the doorway treating him exactly
as if he had been a piece of furniture which had annoyingly got itself
out of place.

Lambert's eyes were quizzical.

Old Planter wasn't at all the bear, cracking cumbersome jokes about the
young ferret that had stolen a march on the sly old foxes of Wall
Street. So that was what his threats amounted to! Or was it because
there was nothing whatever of the former George Morton left?

He examined curiously the bowed white head and the dim eyes in which
some fire lingered. He could still approximate the emotions aroused by
that interview in the library. He felt the old instinct to give this man
every concession to a vast superiority. In a sense, he was still afraid
of him. He had to get over that, for hadn't he come here to accomplish
just that against which Old Planter had warned him?

"Where," Lambert asked, "is the blushing Josiah?"

George caught the irony of his voice, but his mother explained in her
unemotional way that Sylvia and Blodgett were riding.

Certainly all along those early days had been in Lambert's mind, for he
led George to the scene of their fight. He faced him there, and he
laughed.

"You remember?"

"Why not?" George said. "I was born that day."

"Morton! Morton!" Lambert mused.

George swung and caught Lambert's shoulders quickly. There was more than
sentiment in his quick, reminiscent outburst. It seemed even to himself
to carry another threat.

"You call me Mr. Morton, or just George, as if I were about as good as
you."

Lambert laughed.

"We've had some fair battles since then, haven't we,