an, Doris."

"And you are going to be fair, David, dear. Now tell me about your boy."

Instantly Martin was taken off guard. He smiled broadly and patted
Doris's hand, which lay upon his arm.

"Bud's coming out on top!" he said--Clive Cameron was always Bud to
Martin. "I've kept closemouthed about the boy," he went on, forgetting
Joan; "he's meant a lot to me, but I've always recognized the
possibility of failure with him and felt the least I could do, if things
came to the worst, was to leave an exit for him to slip out of,
unnoticed. He's always kept us guessing--my sister and I. He never knew
his father. From a silent, observing child he ran into a stormy, vivid
youth that often threatened disaster if not positive annihilation--but
he's of the breed that dashes to the edge, grinds his teeth, plants his
feet, and looks over!--then, breathing hard, draws back. After a while I
got to banking on that balking trick of his. Once I got used to the fact
that the boy meant to know life--not abuse it--I knew a few easy years
while he plodded or, at times, plunged, through college.

"He couldn't settle, though, on a job, and that upset us at last. He ran
the gamut of professions in his mind--but none of them appealed to him.
When he was nineteen he suddenly took an interest in his father--we'd
never told him much about him. Cameron wasn't a bad chap--he simply
hadn't character enough to _be_ bad--he was a floater! When Bud got that
into his system, it sobered him more than if he'd been told his father
was a scamp. A year later the boy came to me and said: 'Uncle David, if
you don't think I'd queer your profession--I'm going to make a try at
it.'"

Martin's face beamed and then he went on:

"That was a big day for me, Doris, but even when the chap went into it,
I kept quiet. I feared he might balk. But he hasn't! He's big
stuff--that boy of mine. He confided everything to me this time. Certain
phases of the work almost drove him off--dissecting and, well, the
grimmer aspects! Often, he told me, he had to put up a stiff fight with
himself before he could enter a dissecting room--but that does one of
two things, Doris: makes a doctor human or a brute. It has humanized
Bud. He'll be through now, in a year or so, and I'm going to throw him
neck and crop into my practice. I'll stand by for awhile, but I have
great faith in my boy!"

Doris looked up at the grave, happy face above her own.

For a moment a sensation she had nev