“I wasn’t, just at first.  I was a fool.  I let the thing swamp me for awhile.  Mums helped pull me out of the slough and since then I’ve been finding out that happiness is—­well, a kind of by-product.  Like the kingdom of heaven it doesn’t come for observation.  I have had about as much happiness here with you, and with Mums and the girls at home, and with my Scouts in the woods, as I deserve, maybe more.  I’m going to try to get Carlotta.  I haven’t given up hope.  I’m going down to Sea View next week to ask her again and maybe things will be different this time.  Her father is on my side now, which is a great help.  He has got the Holiday Hill viewpoint all at once.  He wants Carlotta to come to me—­us.  So do I, with all my heart.  But whether she does or doesn’t, I am here with you as long as you want me, first last and all the time and glad to be.  Please believe that, Dad, always.”

Stuart Lambert rose.

“Philip, you don’t know what it means to me to hear you say this.”  There was a little break in the older man’s voice, the suggestion of pent emotion.  “It nearly killed me to think I ought to give you up.  You are sure you are not making too much of a sacrifice?”

“Dad!  Please don’t say that word to me.  There isn’t any sacrifice.  It is what I want.  I haven’t been a very good son always.  Even this summer I am afraid I haven’t come up to all you expected of me, especially just at first when I was wrapped up in myself and my own concerns too much to see that doing a good job in the store was only a small part of what I was here in Dunbury to do.  But anyway I am prouder than I can tell you to be your son and I am going to try my darndest to live up to the sign if you will let me stay on being the minor part of it.”

He held out his hand and his father took it.  There were tears in the older man’s eyes.  A moment later the store was dark as the two passed out shoulder to shoulder beneath the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON.

CHAPTER XXII

THE DUNBURY CURE

Harrison Cressy awoke next morning to the cheerful chirrup of robins and the pleasant far-off sound of church bells.  He liked the bells.  They sounded different in the country he thought.  You couldn’t hear them in the city anyway.  There were too many noises to distract you.  There was no Sabbath stillness in the city.  For that matter there wasn’t much Sabbath.

He got up out of bed and went and looked out of the window.  There was a heavenly hush everywhere.  It was still very early.  It had been the Catholic bells ringing for mass that he had heard.  The dew was a-dazzle on every grass blade.  The robins hopped briskly about at their business of worm-gathering.  The morning glories all in fresh bloom climbed cheerfully over the picket fence.  He hadn’t seen a morning glory in years.  It set him dreaming again, took him back to his boyhood days.