When they told Marcia Van Meter (Mrs. Horace Flack) that her little boy would always be lame, that not one of the great surgeon-wizards on either side of the Atlantic—not all the king's horses and all the king's men could ever weight or wrench or force the small, thin left leg down to the length of the right, she vowed to herself that she would make it up to him. She was a pretty thing, transparently frail and ethereal-looking, who had always projected herself passionately into the lives of those about her—her father's and mother's—the young husband's who had died soon after her son was born—and now her boy's. While he was less than ten years old it seemed to her that she compassed it; if he could not race and run with his contemporaries he rode the smartest of ponies and drove clever little traps; if he might not join in the rough sports out of doors he had a houseful of brilliant mechanical toys; he lived like a little Prince—like a little American Prince with a magic bottomless purse at his command. But when he left his little boyhood behind she discovered her futility; she discovered the small, pitiful purchasing power of money, after all. She could not buy him bodily strength and beauty; she could not buy him fellowship in the world of boys; he was forever looking out at it, wistfully, disdainfully, bitterly, through his plate glass window.

She spent herself untiringly for him,—playmates, gifts, tutors, journeys. Her happiest moments were those in which he said, "Mother, I'd like one of those wireless jiggers,"—or a new saddle-horse, or a new roadster—and she was able to answer, "Dearest, I'll get it for you! Mother'll get it for you to-morrow!"

But the days when she could spell omnipotence for him were fading away. He wanted now, increasingly, things beyond her gift. He was a clever boy, proud, poised. He learned early to wear a mask of indifference about his lameness, to affect a coolness for sports which came, eventually, to be genuine. He studied easily and well; he could talk with a brilliancy beyond his years. He learned—astonishingly, at his age—to get his deepest satisfactions from creature comforts—his quietly elegant clothes, his food, his surroundings. Mrs. Van Meter had high hopes of the move to Los Angeles; he was to be benefited, body and brain. She was a little anxious at finding they had moved into a neighborhood of boys and girls; Carter was happier with older people, but he seemed to like these lively, robust creatures surprisingly. Weeks, months, a year, went by. Carter, less than a year older than Jimsy King but two years ahead of him in his studies, was doing some special work at the University of Southern California, but his time was practically his own—to spend with Honor and Jimsy. Honor and Jimsy showed, each of them, the imprint of their association with him. They had come to care more for the things he held high ... books ... theaters ... dinners at the Crafts Alexandria ... Grand Opera records on the victrola ... more careful dress.

"Carter has really done a great deal for those children," Mildred Lorimer told her husband, complacently.

"Yes," Stephen admitted. "It's true. He has. And"—he sighed—"they haven't done a thing for him."

"Stephen dear,—what could they do—crude children that they are, beside a boy with his advantages? What could they do for him?—Make him play football? What did you expect them to do?"

"I don't know," he said, moodily, "but at any rate they haven't done it."

Jimsy King was going—by the grace of his own frantic eleventh hour efforts and his teachers' clemency and Honor Carmody—to graduate. Barring calamities, he would possess a diploma in February. Honor was tremendously earnest about it; Carter, to whom learning came as easily as the air he breathed, faintly amused. She thought, sometimes, for brief, traitorous moments, that Carter wasn't always good for Jimsy.

"You see," she explained to her stepfather, "Carter doesn't realize how hard Jimsy has to grind for all he gets. Even now, Stepper, after being here a year, he actually doesn't realize the importance of Jimsy's getting signed up to play. It's a strange thing, with all his cleverness, but he doesn't, and he's always taking Jimsy out on parties and rides and things, and he gets behind in everything. I think I'll just have to speak to him about it."

He nodded. "That's a good idea, Top Step. Do that."

She grew still more sober. "Another thing, Stepper ... about—about Mr. King's—trouble. Of course, you and I have never believed that Jimsy had to inherit it, have we?"

"No. Not if people let him alone. His life, his training, his environment, are very different—more wholesome, vital. The energy which his grandfather and his uncles and his father had to find a vent for in cards and drink Jimsy's sweated out in athletics."

"Yes. But—just the same—isn't it better for Jimsy to keep away from—from those things?"

"Naturally. Better for anybody."

She sighed. "Carter doesn't think so. He says the world is full of it—Jimsy must learn to be near it and let it alone."

"That's true, in a sense, T. S...."

"I know. But—sometimes I think Carter deliberately takes Jimsy places to—test him. Of course he thinks he's doing right, but it worries me."

Stephen Lorimer smoked in silence. He had his own ideas. "Better have that talk with him," he said.

Honor found the talk oddly disturbing. Carter was very sweet about it as he always was with her, but he held stubbornly to his own opinion.

"Look here, Honor, you can't follow Jimsy through the world like a nursemaid, you know."

"Carter! I don't mean——"

"He's got to meet and face these things, to fight what somebody calls 'the battle of his blood.' You mustn't wrap him up in cotton wool. If he's going, to be bowled over he might as well find it out. He must take his chances—just as any other fellow—just as I must."

"Oh, but, Carter, you know you're strong, and——"

Suddenly his pale face was stung with hot color. "Honor," he leaned forward, "you think I'm strong, in any way? You don't consider me an—utter weakling?"

She looked with comprehending tenderness at his crimson face. "Why, Carter, dear! You know I've never thought you that! There are more ways of being—being strong than—than just with muscles and bones!"

He reached out and took one of her firm, tanned hands in his, and she had never seen him so winningly wistful, so wistfully winning. "I thought," he said, very low, "that was the only kind of strength that counted with you. Then—I do count with you, Honor? I do?"

She was a little startled, a little frightened, wholly uncomfortable. There was something in Carter's voice she didn't understand ... something she didn't want to understand. She pulled her hand away and managed her boyish grin. "Of course you do,—goose! And you'll count more if you'll help me to look after Jimsy and have him graduate on time!" She got up quickly as her stepfather came into the room, and Carter went home, crossing the street with the rather pathetic arrogance of his halting gait, his head held high, tilted a little back, which gave him the expression of looking down on a world of swift striders.

He found his mother reading before a low fire. "Well, dearest?" She smiled up at him, yearningly.

He stood looking down at her, his face working. "Mother, I want Honor Carmody."

"Carter!"

"I want Honor Carmody." He rode over her murmured protests. "I know I'm only nineteen. I know I'm too young—she's too young. I'd expect to wait, of course. But—I want her."

Marcia Van Meter's heart cried out to her to say again as she had said all through his little-boy days, "Dearest, Mother'll get her for you! Mother'll get her for you to-morrow!" But instead her gaze went down to the page she had been reading ... the last scene in "Ghosts," where Oswald Alving says:

"Mother, give me the sun! The sun!! The Sun!!!" She shivered and shut the book with emphasis and threw it on a near-by chair. She spoke brightly, reassuringly. "I'm sure she's devoted to you, dear. You are the best of friends, and that's enough for the present, isn't it?"

"No."

"Dearest, you've said yourself that you realize you're too young for anything serious, yet. Why can't you wait contentedly, until——"

"There's some one else. There's Jimsy."

"Carter, I'm sure they're like brother and sister. They have been playmates all their lives. That sort of thing rarely merges into romance."

"Doesn't it?" His voice was seeking, hungry. "Honestly?"

"Very rarely, dear, believe me!" She sped to comfort him. "Besides, her people, her mother, would never want anything of that sort ... the taint in his blood ... the reputation of his family.... Mrs. Lorimer says they've always been called the 'Wild Kings.' Of course Jimsy seems quite all right, so far, and I hope and pray he always may be—he's a dear boy and I'm very fond of him—but, as he grows older and is beset by more temptations——"

The boy relaxed a little from his pale rigidity and sat down opposite his mother. He held out his hands to the fire and she saw that they were trembling. "Yes," he said, "I've thought of that. I've thought of that. Perhaps, when he gets to college—up at Stanford, away from Honor—I've thought of that!" He bent his head, staring into the fire.

His mother did not see the expression on his face. "Besides, dear, Honor's going abroad next year, for her voice. She'll meet new people, form new ties——"

"That doesn't cheer me up very much, Mother."

"I mean," she hastened, "it will break up the life-long intimacy with Jimsy. And perhaps you and I can go over for the summer, and take her to Switzerland with us. Wouldn't that be jolly? You know, dear," she hesitated, delicately, "while we know that money isn't everything, you are going to have far more to offer a girl, some day, than poor Jimsy King."

"And less," said Carter Van Meter.

He found Honor a little constrained at their next meeting and he hurried to put her at her old time ease with him. He steered the talk on to the coming football game and Honor was herself. Los Angeles High School, champion of Southern California, was to meet Greenmount, the northern champion, and nothing else in the world mattered very much to her and to Jimsy.

"It's so perfect, Carter, to have it come in Jimsy's last year,—to win the State Championship for L. A. just before he leaves."

"Sure of winning?"

"It will be pretty stiff going. They're awfully good, Greenmount. Not as good as we are, on the whole, but they've got a punter—Gridley—who's a perfect wizard! If they can get within a mile of our goal, he can put it over! But—we've got to win. We've simply got to—and 'You can't beat L. A. High!'"

She went to watch football practice every afternoon and Carter nearly always went with her. In the evenings Jimsy came over for her help with his lessons. He had studied harder and better, this last year; his fine brain was waking, catching up with his body, but he was busier than ever, too, and his "Skipper" had still to be on deck. He was discovered, that last year, to have an unsuspected talent, Jimsy King. He could act. His class-play was an ambitious one, a late New York success, a play of sport and youngness, and Jimsy played the lead. "No," the pretty Spanish teacher said, "he didn't play that part; he was it!" It was going to be fine for him at Stanford, Honor's mothering thought raced ahead. The more he had to do, the more things he was interested in....

He came in grinning a few nights before the championship game. "Say, Skipper, what do you think they gave me on that essay? A B. A measly B. Made me so sore I darn near told 'em who wrote it!"

"Jimsy! You wrote it yourself, really. I just smoothed it up a little."

"Yep, just a little! Well, either they're wise, or they just figured it couldn't be a top-notcher if I'd written it!" He cast himself on the couch. "Gee, Skipper, I can't work to-night! I'm a dying man! That dinner Carter bought me last night——"

"Jimsy! You didn't—break training?"

"No. But I skated pretty close to the edge. You know, it's funny, but when I'm out with Carter I feel like such a boob, not daring to eat this or that, or smoke or—or anything." Heresy this, from the three years' captain of L. A. High who had never considered any sacrifice worth a murmur which kept him fit for the real business of life. "Somehow, he's so keen, he makes me wish I had more in my head and—and less in my heels! You know what I mean, Skipper. He does make me look like a simp, doesn't he?"

"No," said Honor, definitely. "Why, Jimsy, you're a million times bigger person than Carter. Everybody knows that. Knowing things isn't everything—knowing what to wear and how to order meals at the Alexandria and reading all the new books and having been to Europe. Those things just fill in for him; they make up—a little—for the things you've had."

"Do you mean that, Skipper? Is that straight?"

"Of course, Jimsy—cross my heart!" It was curious, the way she was having to comfort Jimsy for not being Carter, and Carter for not being Jimsy.