"Stymied!" he muttered.

"Be brave!"

He went on, speaking as if to himself.

"I had pictured--ah, how often I had pictured!--our little home! Hers
and mine. She sewing in her arm-chair, I practising putts on the
hearth-rug----" He choked. "While in the corner, little Harry Vardon
Sturgis played with little J. H. Taylor Sturgis. And round the
room--reading, busy with their childish tasks--little George Duncan
Sturgis, Abe Mitchell Sturgis, Harold Hilton Sturgis, Edward Ray
Sturgis, Horace Hutchinson Sturgis, and little James Braid Sturgis."

"My boy! My boy!" I cried.

"What's the matter?"

"Weren't you giving yourself rather a large family?"

He shook his head moodily.

"Was I?" he said, dully. "I don't know. What's bogey?"

There was a silence.

"And yet----" he said, at last, in a low voice. He paused. An odd,
bright look had come into his eyes. He seemed suddenly to be himself
again, the old, happy Mortimer Sturgis I had known so well. "And yet,"