"I know, mother," he spoke soothingly, "it was too much; you've been too long alone. I'm glad I'm at home at last and can run up here almost any time." He patted her shoulder softly, and whistled for Rag. "Come, put on your shade hat and we'll go up to the quarries. I want to see them; do you realize they are the largest in the country? It's wonderful what a change they've made here! After all, it takes America to forge ahead, for we've got the opportunities and the money to back them—and what more is needed to make us great?" He spoke lightly, expecting no answer.
She brought her hat and the two went up the side road under the elms to the quarry.
Ay, what more is needed to make us great? That is the question. There comes a time when a man, whose ears are not wholly deafened by the roar of a trafficking commercialism, asks this question of himself in the hope that some answer may be vouchsafed to him. If it come at all, it comes like the "still small voice" after the whirlwind; and the man who asks that question in the expectation of a response, must first have suffered, repented, struggled, fought, at times succumbed to fateful overwhelming circumstance, before his soul can be attuned so finely that the "still small voice" becomes audible. Youth and that question are not synchronous.
"I've not been so much alone as you imagine, Champney," said his mother. They were picking their way over the granite slopes and around to Father Honoré's house. "Aileen and Father Honoré and all the Caukinses and, during this last year, those sweet women of the sisterhood have brought so much life into my life up here among these old sheep pastures that I've not had the chance to feel the loneliness I otherwise should. And then there is that never-to-be-forgotten summer with you over the ocean—I feed constantly on the remembrance of all that delight."
"I'm glad you had it, mother."
"Besides, this great industry is so many-sided that it keeps me interested in every new development in spite of myself."
"By the way, mother, you wrote me that you had invested most of that twenty thousand from the quarry lands in bank stock, didn't you?"
"Yes; Mr. Emlie is president now; he is considered safe. The deposits have quadrupled these last two years, and the dividends have been satisfactory."
"Yes, I know Emlie's safe enough, but you don't want to tie up your money so that you can't convert it at once into cash if advisable. You know I shall be on the inside track now and in a position to use a little of it at a time judiciously in order to increase it for you. I'd like to double it for you as Aunt Meda has doubled her inheritance from grandfather—Who's that?"