"It's best for her and best for us,
for she'll be happy. But supposing one of us had won--would it have
been the same--the same as it was before she came--the same as it is
now?"
"No," I answered.
"No," he cried. "Now for supper--then our pipes--all of us
together--you in your chair and I in mine--and Captain and
Colonel--just as it used to be."
XX
Tim has gone back to the city after his first long vacation and here I
am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a
brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys
and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day
is a long way off. In the fall I am to go for a week and we are to
have a fine time, Tim and I, but Captain and Colonel will have to be
content to hear about it when I get back. Surely it will give us much
to talk of in the winter nights, when we three sit by the fire
again--Captain and Colonel and I.
[Illustration: Old Captain.]
Tim says it is lonely for me here. Lonely? Pshaw! I know the ways of
the valley, and there is not a lonely spot in it from the bald top of
Thunder Knob to the tall pine on the Gander's head.
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