ose
goblin clothes driving like Satan in a hurry. It's sensible enough for
you, being in the automobile trade, but for him it's just fool play."

"He does it a little too well to call it that," Gerard returned
seriously.

"Yes? Well, I've got money enough to pay for it--although it's the most
expensive game he's found yet--or for anything else he fancies. I've
told him to amuse himself for a while. He is too young to settle down to
work, when there is no need for it. I never had any playing time, and I
want to see him have his. And he has earned it, too; I suppose he told
you he was through college?"

"Yes, and amazed me."

"He knew it had to be done, so he did it quickly and without any
nonsense. It's an old theory that given liberty and money, a boy will go
to ruin. I never believed it; I don't yet. And I never saw why I should
make my son a different set of living rules from those I make for
myself. Of course, I don't mean there was no law in the house; I don't
think I spoiled Corrie. But I've left him pretty free, only bidding him
keep straight. That I must have, and he knows it. He has got to keep
straight."

A sudden grate like metal on metal roughened the deliberate speech with
a suggestion of grim inflexibility. Flavia lifted vaguely startled eyes
to her father.

"I don't believe you need to worry about that," reassured Gerard
smiling. The echo of Corrie's fresh young tones was in their ears, as he
disputed with his cousin, outside the windows at the end of the room.

"I guess not. He's too much like his mother." Mr. Rose dropped his hand
on Flavia's, as she sat in her low chair beside him. "And she was what
they call an aristocrat, nowadays, but I called a lady when I married
her. Old family, gentle breeding, the society end, and good looks like
my little girl's that seem too fine to touch; she had all and everything
except money. And I gave her that."

Flavia leaned nearer to her father with the caressing confidence in
mutual affection which marked all the household intercourse and pervaded
the gorgeous pink villa like an actual fragrance of atmosphere.

"I gave her that. She liked to spend it. Not," his keen eyes suddenly
sprang challengingly to the other man's, "Not that she married me for
money. Don't think it. My wife loved me. I guess I struck her family
like a cyclone; I was self-made and used to my own way, at thirty, and
not uglier than my neighbors. Mrs. Tom Rose was a happy woman, until sh