"Thanks for the tribute," Madeline smiled as he disappeared down the

drive. "Dick, I wish you'd always be on hand when he comes. He makes my

brain feel like a woolly dog."

"Rummy chap," said Norris.

The older people came in to greet the boy they had known all his life,

to ask the innumerable usual questions, to say the inevitable things

through dinner.

Afterwards, when the last fragments of sunset burned through and across

the water, they gathered on the piazza. It was that dreamy hour when

women find it easy to be silent and men to talk. Madeline and her mother

sat close, with hands restfully clasped in their joy at being together.

Mr. Elton eyed the two young men from his vantage of years of shrewd

wisdom. Both the boys were clean-shaven, after the manner of the day, a

fashion that seems to become clean manliness, vigorous and

self-controlled. Both were good to look at; but here the resemblance

ended, for Dick's long slender face and body lithe with its athletic

training, was alive and restless, as though he found it difficult to

keep back his passion for activity; Ellery, big but loosely joined, had

the dogged look of one that held some of his energy in reserve. A good

pair, Mr. Elton concluded, and felt a sudden spasm of longing for a

son--not that he would have exchanged Madeline for any trousered biped

that walked, but it would be a great thing to own one such well of young

masculine vigor as these.

"It's going to be great fun for us old fellows to sit back and watch you

young ones," the elder man ejaculated. "There are several good-sized

jobs waiting for you."

"That's a good thing," said Dick. "When there's nothing to do, nobody'll

do it."

"And it will be a tame sort of a world, eh? Well, thank the Lord, it's

none of our responsibility any longer. You've got to tackle it. The new

phases of things are too much for me, with a brain solidified by years."

"You might at least help us by stating the problem," said Norris.

"You see, it's like this. Until a few years ago every census map of the

United States was seamed by a long line marked 'frontier.' That line is

gone. That's the situation in a nutshell. Our work, the subjugation of

the land, is about done, and the question is now up to you; what are you

going to do with it? You know the old story of the man who said he had a

horse who could run a mile in two-forty. And the other fellow asked,

'What are you going to do when you get there?' We've done the running

and our children are there. Now what? You must develop a whole set of

new talents--not trotting talents, but staying talents."




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