"Why, she's old enough to be his mother!" said Dr. Lavendar.

"Oh, no. Sam's Sam is twenty-three, and one of my patients says that
Mrs. Richie will never see forty-five again. Which leads me to
conclude that she's about thirty."

"Of course she doesn't encourage him?" Dr. Lavendar said anxiously.

"She lets him come to see her, and she took him out once in that
wicker-work vehicle she has--looks like a clothes-basket on wheels.
And she provides the clothes to put into it. I'm told they're
beautiful; but that no truly pious female would be willing to decorate
poor flesh and blood with such finery. I'm told--"

"William! Is this the way I've brought you up? To pander to my
besetting sin? Hold your tongue!" Dr. Lavendar rose chuckling, and
stood in front of the fireplace, gathering the tails of his flowered
cashmere dressing-gown under his arms. "But Willy I hope Sam isn't
really smitten? You never can tell what that boy will do."

"Yes, he's a hair-trigger," the doctor agreed, "a hair-trigger! And
his father understands him about as well as--as Danny there
understands Hebrew! I think it's a case of Samuel and his father over
again. Dr. Lavendar, do you suppose anybody will ever know what those
two quarrelled about?"

"Probably not."

"I suppose," William King ruminated, "that you'd call Sam a genius?"