“I’m concerned that Peter might have too much, too soon, and I like your idea of keeping things in trust until he’s thirty-five, so I put that in there. You have the authority, however, to deal with that as you wish, up until he’s thirty-five.”

“Thank you. I’ll try to keep a tight rein on things.”

“I don’t think that will be hard, since he never seems to think about money, unless it’s in connection with his filming budget. I just don’t want a truckload of cash dumped on him before he knows something about handling it.”

“I understand, and I entirely agree.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Is that it?” Stone asked.

“I’m thinking,” she said. “Give me a minute.”

“All right.”

“Give my jewelry, in reasonable amounts, to Peter’s wife, when he marries. Funny, but I’ve been thinking about Hattie as Peter’s future wife, which is silly, I suppose.”

“We can wish for that,” Stone said. “They seem very well suited to each other.”

“But they’re so young!”

“And getting older every day,” Stone said. “He says she’s smarter than he is.”

“No!” Arrington said. “I’ve never heard him say that about anybody !”

“He’s probably never met anybody who’s that smart,” Stone pointed out.

“There is that,” Arrington admitted. “He’s spent his whole life stunning me, on an almost daily basis, with his precocity.”

“I’m beginning to get used to that,” Stone said.

“Really? I never have.”

“I still have difficulty thinking of him as a child.”

“Well, he is. You’ll see that in him, eventually. It comes out at the damnedest times.”

“He’s going to be gone before I get to know him fully,” Stone said. “I want to spend some time with him in Maine this summer, teach him to sail. He already wants to learn to fly.”

“Fly? He doesn’t even drive yet!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to let him even take lessons until he’s at least eighteen. Once he starts at Yale, he’ll be too wrapped up in work to even think about it.”

“I hope you’re right, though I think he has traits that will make him a good pilot. He’s organized and detail-oriented, and, of course, he learns with blinding speed.”

“We’ve had only one flight in my Mustang, coming down here, and he seems already to have grasped the avionics pretty well.”

“That’s the sort of thing he does.” She yawned. “I’m sleepy,” she said.

“Then go to sleep.”

“No making love?”

“We’ll save it until the morning.”

“All right.”

“I have a date to go riding with Peter and Hattie at eight. Do you want to come?” he asked.