“California?”

“Yes.  Haven’t seen it for three years.  I thought when the war was over I might.  But I’ve got to be near Washington, it seems.  The heat drove me out, and somebody told me it would be cool in these hills——­”

“It is, at night.  By day we’re not strenuous.”

“I like to be strenuous.  I hate inaction.”

He moved restlessly.  There was a crutch by his side.  Young Paine noticed it for the first time.  “I hate it.”

He had a strong frame, broad shoulders and thin hips.  One placed him immediately as a man of great physical force.  Yet there was the crutch.  Randy had seen other men, broad-shouldered, thin-hipped, who had come to worse than crutches.  He did not want to think of them.  He had escaped without a scratch.  He did not believe that he had lacked courage, and there was a decoration to prove that he had not.  But when he thought of those other men, he had no sense of his own valor.  He had given so little and they had given so much.

Yet it was not a thing to speak of.  He struck, therefore, a note to which he knew the other might respond.

“If you haven’t been here before, you’ll like the old places.”

“I am going to one of them.”

“Which?”

“King’s Crest.”

A moment’s silence.  Then, “That’s my home.  I have lived there all my life.”

The lame man gave him a sharp glance.  “I heard of it in
Washington—­delightful atmosphere—­and all that——­”

“You are going as a—­paying guest?”

“Yes.”

A deep flush stained the younger man’s face.  Suddenly he broke out.  “If you knew how rotten it seems to me to have my mother keeping—­boarders——­”

“My dear fellow, I hope you don’t think it is going to be rotten to have me?”

“No.  But there are other people.  And I didn’t know until I came back from France——­ She had to tell me when she knew I was coming.”

“She had been doing it all the time you were away?”

“Yes.  Before I went we had mortgaged things to help me through the University.  I should have finished in a year if I hadn’t enlisted.  And Mother insisted there was enough for her.  But there wasn’t with the interest and everything—­and she wouldn’t sell an acre.  I shan’t let her keep on——­”

“Are you going to turn me out?”

His smile was irresistible.  Randy smiled back.  “I suppose you think I’m a fool——?”

“Yes.  For being ashamed of it.”

Randy’s head went up.  “I’m not ashamed of the boarding-house.  I am ashamed to have my mother work.”

“So,” said the lame man, softly, “that’s it?  And your name is Paine?”

“Randolph Paine of King’s Crest.  There have been a lot of us—­and not a piker in the lot.”

“I am Mark Prime.”

“Major Prime of the 135th?”

The other nodded.  “The wonderful 135th—­God, what men they were——­” his eyes shone.