p
about the hills. He said very simply that he had worked for twenty
years to do it. 'You see, I'm a rich man,' he said, 'and it seems that
one must be rich in this world before one dare be poor from choice. I
couldn't do this if people didn't know that I could have an apartment
in Paris, and servants, and motor-cars, and all the rest of it. It
would hurt my daughters and distress my friends. There are hundreds and
thousands of unhappy people in the world who can't afford to be poor,
and if ever you get a chance, you try it. You'll never be rich again.'
So I wrote him about a month ago that I had found MY olive garden,"
finished Sidney contentedly, "and was enjoying it."

"Captain Burgoyne was older than you, Sid?" Barry questioned. "Wouldn't
he have loved this sort of life?"

"Twenty years older, yes; but he wouldn't have lived here for one DAY!"
she answered vivaciously. "He was a diplomat, a courtier to his
finger-tips. He was born to the atmosphere of hothouse flowers, and
salons, and delightful little drawing-room plots and gossip. He loved
politics, and power, and women in full dress, and men with orders. Of
course I was very new to it all, but he liked to spoil me, draw me out.
If it hadn't been for his accident, I never would have grown up at all,
I dare say. As it was, I was more like his mother. We went to
Washington for the season, New York for the opera, England for autumn
visits, Paris for the spring: I loved to make him happy, Barry, and he
wasn't happy except when we were going, going, going. He was
exceptionally popular; he had exceptional friends, and he couldn't go
anywhere without me. My babies were with his mother--"

She paused, turning a white rose between her fingers. "And afterwards,"
she said presently, "there was Father. And Father never would spend two
nights in the same place if he could help it."

"I wasn't drawn back here as you were," said Barry thoughtfully, "I
liked New York; I could have made good there if I'd had a chance. It
made me sick to give it up, then; but lately I've been feeling
differently. A newspaper's a pretty influential thing, wherever it is.
I've been thinking about that clubhouse plan of yours; I wish to the
Lord that we could do something for those poor kids over there. You're
right. Those girls have rotten homes. The whole family gathers in the
parlor right after dinner. Pa takes his shoes off, and props his socks
up before the stove; Ma begins to hear a kid his