with us it wouldn't have taken us all these months of that dreadful war
to get comfortably home. Peter said at the dock that he hadn't drawn a
full breath since war had been declared until he got my feet off the
gang-plank on to American soil. He needn't have worried quite as much
as that, for we had a lovely, exciting time visiting at the Gregorys' up
in Scotland while waiting for state-rooms. And it was while hearing all
those Scotchmen and Englishmen talk about statesmanship and
jurisprudence and international law that I realized how America would
need great brains later on, more and more, as she would have to
arbitrate, maybe, for the whole world.

I smiled inwardly as I listened, for didn't I know that in just a few
years the nation would have Samuel Foster Crittenden to rely on? Sam is
a statesman by inheritance, for he has all sorts of remarkable Tennessee
ancestry back of him from Colonial times down to his father's father,
who was one of the great generals of our own Civil War. And as I
listened to those splendid men talk about military matters, just as
Judge Crittenden had talked to Sam and me about his father, the general,
ever since we were big enough to sit up and hear about it, and discuss
what American brains and character could be depended upon to do, I
glowed with pride and confidence in Sam. I'm glad I didn't know then
about the collapsed structure of my hopes for him that Sam was even then
secretly unsettling. At the thought my hand trembled on the wheel and I
turned my car hastily away from two chickens and a dog in the road and
my mind from the anxiety of Sam to further pleasant thoughts of Peter.

I don't believe Judge Vandyne's thoughts of Peter are as pleasant as
mine, for Peter doesn't go to the office at all any more; he spends his
waking moments at a club where players and play-writers and all men
play a great deal of the time. I forget its name, but it makes the judge