48]

[Pg 48]

"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—just the same—isn't it better for Jimsy to keep away from—from those things?"

"Naturally. Better for anybody."

She sighed. "Carter doesn't think so. He says the world is full of it—Jimsy must learn to be near it and let it alone."

"That's true, in a sense, T. S...."

"I know. But—sometimes I think Carter deliberately takes Jimsy places to—test him. Of course he thinks he's doing right, but it worries me."

Stephen Lorimer smoked in silence. He had his own ideas. "Better have that talk with him," he said.

Honor found the talk oddly disturbing. Carter was very sweet about it as he always was with her, but he held stubbornly to his own opinion.

"Look here, Honor, you can't follow Jimsy through the world like a nursemaid, you know."

"Carter! I don't mean——"

"He's got to meet and face these things, to fight what somebody calls 'the battle of his blood.' You[Pg 49] mustn't wrap him up in cotton wool. If he's going, to be bowled over he might as well find it out. He must take his chances—just as any other fellow—just as I must."

[Pg 49]

"Oh, but, Carter, you know you're strong, and——"

Suddenly his pale face was stung with hot color. "Honor," he leaned forward, "you think I'm strong, in any way? You don't consider me an—utter weakling?"

She looked with comprehending tenderness at his crimson face. "Why, Carter, dear! You know I've never thought you that! There are more ways of being—being strong than—than just with muscles and bones!"

He reached out and took one of her firm, tanned hands in his, and she had never seen him so winningly wistful, so wistfully winning. "I thought," he 

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