“What’s funny?” inquired Mr. Keeler, as Roy looked up with a half smile.

“Why, it’s just a month ago to-day since Rex came down here to mope because we didn’t have money enough to let him go on a trip to Canada, and now I’ve come here to do the same thing because we’re come into a fortune.”

“Then you don’t care for the money?” remarked the author.

“Not if it’s going to break up a family the way it has ours.  Jess used to be awfully lively and full of fun, and now she’s all the time talking about new clothes and the places she wants to go, and how she’s going to have her room decorated in the new house.”

“But I thought you said she wanted to go to Europe.”

“So I did.  That’s one of the troubles.  She don’t know what she wants.  It’s one thing one minute and another the next.”

“But your mother?  Doesn’t she have something to say about it?”

“Yes, but she’s so fond of us all, she wants to do what will give us the most pleasure.  And of course when we all want different things that’s pretty hard to do.”

“And the ‘different thing’ that I want is to stay right here in Marley.  I’d graduate at the academy here next June, and then all my friends are here, and I like the country.  Now if your hero in a story was in a fix like this what would you do with him?”

“It depends on the sort of story I was writing.  If it was one with a motive, a moral, so to speak, I’d have him give up his own desire and say he’d be perfectly willing to do what the rest wanted to do.”

“But if the rest wanted to do different things?  Here’s Rex wanting to live in Philadelphia, and Eva thinking it would be ever so much nicer to live in Boston, and Jess divided half of the time between New York and Europe, and Sydney looking as if he’d drop into the grave right off if we didn’t do something quick—­ what then?”

Roy spoke very earnestly, and Mr. Keeler did not smile this time.  He began to pick at the bark on the tree trunk and did not reply for some little time after Roy had paused.

“I think,” he said finally, “that in that case I should have had my hero try to make himself contented with whichever decision was arrived at.  Half a million ought to atone for a great many drawbacks.”

“Oh, I know a lot of people envy us,” broke in Roy.  “Charley Minturn says I ought to be the happiest fellow going.  But I’m not.  That’s because I’m going—­ to leave Marley.  I s’pose you think it’s queer for me to tell all this to a stranger.  But it’s just because you are a stranger that I feel that I can do it.  You can understand how that can be, can’t you, Mr. Keeler?”

“Yes, perfectly.  But I think you attach too much importance to your feeling for Marley.  Of course you think now that you will not be contented elsewhere because you do not yet know the attractions of other places.  I remember when I was in my teens, living abroad, I thought I could not be happy anywhere but in Paris.  I had been there all winter, and when spring came and we were to go to Germany I felt just as you do over leaving Marley.  But when we were settled in our German home I grew to like it just as I had Paris.  That is the way it is sure to be with you.”