Then I wondered at it all. Then I said to myself, "Is it best?"

"What makes you so quiet, Mark?" asked Tim.

"I was wishing, Tim," I answered, laying a hand on each of his broad
shoulders, "I was wishing you had kept her when you had her."

Tim laughed. It was his clear, honest laugh.

"It is best as it is," he said. "It's best for her and best for us,
for she'll be happy. But supposing one of us had won--would it have
been the same--the same as it was before she came--the same as it is
now?"

"No," I answered.

"No," he cried. "Now for supper--then our pipes--all of us
together--you in your chair and I in mine--and Captain and
Colonel--just as it used to be."




XX

Tim has gone back to the city after his first long vacation and here I
am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a
brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys
and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day
is a long way off. In the fall I am to go for a week and we are to