"You false alarm. You quitter!" he answered.

Alix laughed, a trifle guiltily. Also she flushed, with a great
wave of splendid young colour that made her face look seventeen
again. "Your father left you--something, Alix?" Peter asked
presently, with some hesitation.

"That," she answered frankly, "is where Anne comes in!"

"Anne?"

"Anne and Justin came straight over," Alix went on, "and they were
really lovely. And they asked me to come to them for a visit--but
I couldn't very well; they live with his mother, you know, Amanda
Price Little, who writes the letters to the Chronicle about
educating children and all that. Doctor Younger and George Sewall
were here every day; you and George were named as executors. I was
so mixed up in policies and deeds and overdue taxes and interest
and bonds--"

"Poor old Alix, if I had only been here to help you!" the man
said. And for a moment they looked a little consciously at each
other.

"Well, anyway," the girl resumed hastily, "when it came to reading
the will, Anne and Justin sprung a mine under us! It seems that
ten years ago, when the Strickland Patent Fire Extinguisher was
put upon the market, my adorable father didn't have much money--he
never did have, somehow. So Anne's father, my Uncle Vincent, went
into it with him to the extent of about three thousand dollars--"