“Of course you’ll dress,” said Mrs. Beaufort; “there are certain things which we must always demand of ourselves——­”

Caroline Paine agreed.  “That’s what I tell Randy when he says he doesn’t want to finish his law course.  His father was a lawyer and his grandfather.  He owes it to them to live up to their standards.”

Randy was again flat on his back with his hands under his head.  “If I stay at the University, it means no money for either of us except what you earn, Mother.”

The war had taken its toll of Caroline Paine.  Things had not been easy since her son had left her.  They would not be easy now.  “I know,” she said, “but you wouldn’t want your father to be ashamed of you.”

Randy sat up.  “It isn’t that—­but I ought to make some money——­”

The word was a challenge to the Judge.  “Don’t run with the mob, my boy.  The world is money-mad.”

“I’m not money-mad,” said Randy; “I know what I should like to do if my life was my own.  But it isn’t.  And I’m not going to have Mother twist and turn as she has twisted and turned for the last fifteen years in order to get me educated up to the family standard.”

“If you don’t mind I shouldn’t.”  Caroline Paine was setting her feet to a rocky path, but she did not falter.  “You shouldn’t mind if I don’t.”

Becky laid down the chaplet of leaves.  She knew some of the things Caroline Paine had sacrificed and she was thrilled by them.  “Randy,” she admonished, with youthful severity, “it would be a shame to disappoint your mother.”

Randolph flushed beneath his dark skin.  The Paines had an Indian strain in them—­Pocahontas was responsible for it, or some of the other princesses who had mixed red blood with blue in the days when Virginia belonged to the King.  Randy showed signs of it in his square-set jaw, the high lift of his head, his long easy stride, the straightness of his black hair.  He showed it, too, in a certain stoical impassiveness which might have been taken for indifference.  His world was, for the moment, against him; he would attempt no argument.

“I am afraid this doesn’t interest Major Prime,” he said.

“It interests me very much,” said the Major.  “It is only another case of the fighting man’s adjustment to life after his return.  We all have to face it in one way or another.”  His eyes went out over the hills.  They were gray eyes, deep set, and, at this moment, kindly.  They could blaze, however, in stress of fighting, like bits of steel.  “We all have to face it in one way or another.  And the future of America depends largely on our seeing things straight.”

“Well, there’s only one way for Randy to face it,” said Caroline Paine, firmly, “and that is to do as his fathers did before him.”

“If I do,” Randy flared, “it will be three years before I can make a living, and I’ll be twenty-five.”

Becky put on the chaplet of leaves.  It fitted like a cap.  She might have been a dryad, escaped for a moment from the old oak.  “Three years isn’t long.”