The Rising Tide

pinions went, he had to concede almost everything; of course Freddy's project was "absurd"; of course "girls didn't do such thin

e to death," Mr

e it myself,

Mr. Maitlan

nglish! The smallness of their vocabulary is dreadfully stupid. They think it is s

ever she had a proposal. I don't think Freddy has had a single offer. I tell her it's because she cheapens herself by being so familiar with the young men. Not an offer!

to Frederica. Maitland was just the man for her; a good fellow, straight and clean, and with money behind him. The worst of it was that he could not be counted on to discourage Fred's folly; indeed, he seemed immensely taken by all her schemes; the more preposterous she was, the m

was not

as he got out of the elevator, glanced at the gilt letters with ironical eyes. He was about to let the panels o

thing: do you recall the twenty

rfect actor

ost interesti

g

eally?" looked for a way of escape-bu

other time." Then the umbrella was reversed and

c nowadays," Mr. Weston

t her energy int

ton would have

n the law to her elders! She instructed me who I should vote for, if you please! S

l like you or me, when we

wadays, my dear William. There are no more 'Clinging Vines.' Mrs. Payton is one of the last of them, and, Lord! what a blasted oak she clung to!" He had an unopened letter from Mrs. Payton in his pocket, and as he sauntered along he wondered whether, if it remained unopened for another hour or two, he could[Pg 36] lie truthfully to her and say he had not received it "in time" to come and talk ov

nd, to a blighted being of thirty-six, entirely uninteresting. When he came home, nine years later (heart-whole), to render an account of his Payton stewardship, it was to find with dismay that "old Andy," just deceased, had expressed his appreciation of services rendered by naming him one of the executors of the Payton estate, and to find, also, that the grubby, silent girl he had left when he went to Europe had shot up into a tall, rather angular woman, no longer silent, and most provokingly interesting. She was st

d; it had none of the bitterness which marked the bewilderment of her elderly relatives, or the very freely expressed contempt of her masculine cousins. Her man of business felt only amusement, and a pity which made him, at m

id; "confound it, I run with th

zed that Fred's suffering moved him more than[Pg 38] Mrs. Payton's. Think of having the "veiled intellect" in the ell, "shuffling round" all the time! "But that's life," he reminded himself. Duty handcuffs all of us to our relations. Look at the historic Aunt Adelaide, who wouldn't take any of her beaux-there were more of them every time Mrs. P

ent was sound-it was silly for Aunt Adelaide to sacrifice herself on the altar of a being absolutely useless to society. Then he thought, uneasily, of the possi

p or factory. "'The new wine's foaming flow'!-I should think Billy-boy would spank her," Weston thought, sympathetically. Furthermore, Laura detected, with affectionate contempt, the weak places in her elder's armor of pompous authority. He had heard her take off her father's "perfec' nonsense"! Her comments upon her mother's lazy plumpness were as accurate as they were disrespectful. Imagine girls back in the '70's, or even the '80's, doing such things! Yet Laura differed, somehow, from Fred; she was-he couldn't formulate it. He looked absently at the babies, and the nurse

all these dames with white caps on! Y

And she must have rubbers on, because there is no surer way of taking[Pg 40] cold than by having damp feet. And she must do all that all her great-aunts have

ingleted damsels would be a good deal of a peach. "You see the phot

n's going into busine

he's a

e other man

her last night, and she told me how t

ston n

"I've only seen Mrs. Payton once or twice, but it struck

le cerebral quietude," We

Payton house, and see old Andy Pa

fraid of it;-there are

she was the finest woman I k

? Lo

g

She's no Victorian m

ld send her to bed

-women," Fred's defender said; "she told 'em to get

was true is

ou just like another man. There's none of this business of pretendin

as you," Arthur Weston deprecated,

that nasty uplift play that they tried to pull off at the Penn Street Theater; and then I jerked myself up, and sort of apologized. And Freddy said, 'Go ahead; what's eating yo

is probably more than either you or Fred have done. I don't

. I took her round in my car to[Pg 42] look up apartments for those relatio

brother, has to go out in a carriage

o have a little motor of her ow

rd-don't stand there like the Colossus of Rhodes, looking down at me as if I only weighed as much as one of your legs-tell me this: don't you see that this business of Fred's earning her living is perfectly artificial? She has a l

here isn't any real work for her, so she has to manufacture an occupation-like this social-service stunt at the hospitals they're so hot on nowadays. Joe[Pg 43] Gould-he's an interne-he told me the most of 'em were nuisances. But, oh, how they enjoy it! They just lap it up. It makes me a little fatigued to hear 'em talk about it," he said, yawnin

ton said; "but don't you see? Fr

notice that reformers don't take other people's stunts very seriously? Fred has no use f

ver mind that. What I want to know is, why don't some

t know any man who could keep up with h

protesting hand. "Pl

agoda on the artificial island showed a sudden spark of light, and[Pg 44] the arc-lamps across the park sputtered into the evening haze like lurching moons. T

nds," Fred's man of busin

nteresting as the cold dusk of t