He smiled broadly,

"We are all amiable enough with our own dreams. You think that what you
are working for--your dream--is somehow sounder and more practical than
what I am working for."

Horace started to reply, but had scarcely debouched from his trenches
when I opened on him with one of my twenty-fours.

"How do you know that you are ever going to be old?"

It hit.

"And if you do grow old, how do you know that thirty thousand
dollars--oh, we'll call it that--is really enough, provided you don't
lose it before, to buy peace and comfort for you, or that what you leave
your children will make either you or them any happier? Peace and
comfort and happiness are terribly expensive, Horace--and prices have
been going up fast since this war began!"

Horace looked at me uncomfortably, as men do in the world when you shake
the foundations of the tabernacle. I have thought since that I probably
pressed him too far; but these things go deep with me.

"No, Horace," I said, "you are the dreamer--and the impractical dreamer
at that!"

For a moment Horace answered nothing; and we both stood still there in
the soft morning sunshine with the peaceful fields and woods all about