"Ken," said Mr. Lowell, "home is where you love. In California you will learn to love a new home, a gloriously beautiful home. My boy, I'm a born Texan. I shall always come back to these barren acres because here did the seed of me sprout. And in the bitter future, I shall be borne back to Texas soil and here shall I eternally rest. But, Kenneth, I am taking you into the great world. This summer, we shall live in Southern California. Next winter in Miami. Next spring in Paris. You must always hold Texas close and dear to you. But Texas, great as she is, is but a fragment. The world, Ken—that is your apple pie. Cut it—as you will."
Ken—seventeen—thrilled to these inspired words. The older man—old because of his graying Van Dyck, with his slanting watery-blue eyes, his oddly precise manner of clipping his words, his neatly tailored clothes, his ivory-headed stick, his faintly perfumed breath—placed that square-tipped-fingered hand again upon Ken's sleeve.
"My boy," he said, "you make me very happy."
If Ken was making Mr. Lowell happy, Mr. Lowell was leading Ken to Kingdom Come. At this moment when Dawson County was ending and roadside signs about the boll weevil advertised the coming of Kent County, Ken shook his head abruptly as if to make sure that he was fully awake. He then turned to Mr. Lowell.
"Mr. Lowell," he said, "I don't know how you made father let me go with you."
"It was easy," Mr. Lowell said. "I told him you were a handsome young brute and that you deserved better than a Selma upbringing. Your father is a sensible man. If he weren't, you'd be working in his office and you'd be set-
