He looked around the church with what was almost a possessive eye. These

people were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had,

against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wall

on the roll of honor. Small as it was, this was his world.

Half smiling, he glanced about. He did not realize that behind their

bows and greetings there was something new that day, something not so

much unkind as questioning.

Outside in the street he tucked his aunt, Mrs. Crosby, against the

spring wind, and waited at the wheel of the car while David entered with

the deliberation of a man accustomed to the sagging of his old side-bar

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buggy under his weight. Long ago Dick had dropped the titular "uncle,"

and as David he now addressed him.

"You're going to play some golf this afternoon, David," he said firmly.

"Mike had me out this morning to look at your buggy springs."

David chuckled. He still stuck to his old horse, and to the ancient

vehicle which had been the signal of distress before so many doors for

forty years. "I can trust old Nettie," he would say. "She doesn't freeze

her radiator on cold nights, she doesn't skid, and if I drop asleep

she'll take me home and into my own barn, which is more than any

automobile would do."

"I'm going to sleep," he said comfortably. "Get Wallie Sayre--I see he's

back from some place again--or ask a nice girl. Ask Elizabeth Wheeler. I

don't think Lucy here expects to be the only woman in your life."

Dick stared into the windshield.

"I've been wondering about that, David," he said, "just how much

right--"

"Balderdash!" David snorted. "Don't get any fool notion in your head."

Followed a short silence with Dick driving automatically and thinking.

Finally he drew a long breath.

"All right," he said, "how about that golf--you need exercise. You're

putting on weight, and you know it. And you smoke too much. It's either

less tobacco or more walking, and you ought to know it."

David grunted, but he turned to Lucy Crosby, in the rear seat: "Lucy, d'you know where my clubs are?"

"You loaned them to Jim Wheeler last fall. If you get three of them back

you're lucky." Mrs. Crosby's voice was faintly tart. Long ago she

had learned that her brother's belongings were his only by right of

purchase, and were by way of being community property. When, early

in her widowhood and her return to his home, she had found that her

protests resulted only in a sort of clandestine giving or lending, she

had exacted a promise from him. "I ask only one thing, David," she

had said. "Tell me where the things go. There wasn't a blanket for the

guest-room bed at the time of the Diocesan Convention."




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