was happier with older people,
but he seemed to like these lively, robust creatures surprisingly.
Weeks, months, a year, went by. Carter, less than a year older than
Jimsy King but two years ahead of him in his studies, was doing some
special work at the University of Southern California, but his time was
practically his own--to spend with Honor and Jimsy. Honor and Jimsy
showed, each of them, the imprint of their association with him. They
had come to care more for the things he held high ... books ... theaters
... dinners at the Crafts Alexandria ... Grand Opera records on the
victrola ... more careful dress.

"Carter has really done a great deal for those children," Mildred
Lorimer told her husband, complacently.

"Yes," Stephen admitted. "It's true. He has. And"--he sighed--"they
haven't done a thing for him."

"Stephen dear,--what could they do--crude children that they are, beside
a boy with his advantages? What could they do for him?--Make him play
football? What did you expect them to do?"

"I don't know," he said, moodily, "but at any rate they haven't done
it."

Jimsy King was going--by the grace of his own frantic eleventh hour
efforts and his teachers' clemency and Honor Carmody--to graduate.
Barring calamities, he would possess a diploma in February. Honor was
tremendously earnest about it; Carter, to whom learning came as easily
as the air he breathed, faintly amused. She thought, sometimes, for
brief, traitorous moments, that Carter wasn't always good for Jimsy.

"You see," she explained to her stepfather, "Carter doesn't realize how
hard Jimsy has to grind for all he gets. Even now, Stepper, after being
here a year, he actually doesn't realize the importance of Jimsy's
getting signed up to play. It's a strange thing, with all his
cleverness, but he doesn't, and he's always taking Jimsy out on parties
and rides and things, and he gets behind in everything. I think I'll
just have to speak to him about it."

He nodded. "That's a good idea, Top Step. Do that."

She grew still more sober. "Another thing, Stepper ... about--about Mr.
King's--trouble. Of course, you and I have never believed that Jimsy
_had_ to inherit it, have we?"

"No. Not if people let him alone. His life, his training, his
environment, are very different--more wholesome, vital. The energy which
his grandfather and his uncles and his father had to find a vent for in
cards and drink Jimsy's sweated out in athletics."

"Yes. But-