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 be for quite awhile. But I'm going to talk her out of that, or die trying."

"Sure!" said Bones sympathetically.

"So you see, it's just a waste of time, my milling around here. I want to get out and get started in business. No wife of mine is going to live on my mother's money, that's one thing that's settled right now."

"What are you going to do, do you know?"

"Oh," Jock retorted vaguely, "sell bonds, or something, I suppose. That's what everybody does, isn't it?"

"It is," said Bones, "but you're not 'everybody.' You ought to take up something different and cagey—leave the peddling jobs to fish like me who can't do anything else."

Jock sputtered, "Now you're popping off just like your sister! There seems to be a family hallucination about my potentialities"

"By the way! That reminds me, Peg's engaged too. I just had a letter."

"She is? Fine! I'm"

"Oh, don't run a temperature over the thing," Bones advised. "Ten to one it won't pan out—you know Peg, she catches engagements like the rest of us catch colds. But she wanted me to tell you."

Later, when they went down to dinner arm in arm, Bones said with a determined levity that deceived neither of them, "Then it's all decided, is it? You're really going to sign off, and leave the rest of us flat?"

"Guess I am," replied Jock. "Don't say anything about it yet—I haven't talked it over with the mater, of course, but—well, I guess I am."

"I'll miss you."

"Same here, old man."