The Happiest Time of Their Lives

r breakfasted together rather hastily, for she was going to court that morning to testify in favor o

Dr. Lily MacComb Parret. She was a great friend of his, and he felt a decided temptation to go in and tell her the news

rs, and on each side of the fireplace stood two worn, but comfortable, arm-chairs, each with a reading-lamp at its side. There was nothing beautiful in the furniture, and yet the room had its own charm. The house was a corner house and had once been a single dwelling. The shape of the room, i

nly of her keen interest in his affairs, but later he had come to consider what this particular piece of news would mean

s if they had lived in a sort of partnership since he had been able to walk and talk. It had been as natural for him to spend his hours after school in stamping and sealing her large correspondence as it had been for her to pinch and arrange for years so as to send him to the university fr

this gaiety that he had first thought until Mathilde had pointed out to him that there was tragedy in the situation. "What will your mother do without you?" the girl kept saying. There was indeed

eir servant's uncounted hours. While he was making himself some tea he

dear?" he asked gent

and put up her hand to the s

ggested a boy-a boy rather overtrained; she was far more boyish than Wayne. She had a certain queer beauty, too; not beauty of Adelaide's type, of structure and coloring and elegance, but beauty of expression. Life itself had written some fine lines of humor and resolve upon her face, and her blue-gray eyes s

anything to eat in th

moved together to

pie has been in the ice-box at lea

e saucer th

so much,"

don't yo

let Wayne take the saucer. "

as she adopted most

sat down on the kitchen table and poured out h

as in the tone. For an instant, crushed and terrified, she looked at him; and

one perfec

red, young, luxurious child, with birth, br

n, but this time with a

if to say that she wasn

hed her chair nearer th

ll me all

his going would free her life, would make it easier instead of harder? Every man, he knew, felt the element of freedom beneath the despair of breaking even the tenderest of ties. Some women, he supposed, might feel the same way about their love-affairs. But could they feel the same about their maternal relations? Could it be that his mother, that pure, heroic, self-sacrificing soul, was now thinking more

to know about it

ything," s

ngs ago at a dance. I never expe

really expects to fall in lov

ed to him for the first time that she knew all about it. He decided to ask her the grea

h dependence is to be place

te! What a qu

ture goes out to this girl; but I can't help knowing that if we go on feeling like this

ecision of conduct. She could resolve in an instant to send a drunkard to an institution or take a trip round the world; but on a matter of philosophy of life i

taking. Life and death are like that, too. I don't think it pays to be always thinking about avoiding risks. Nothing, you know," she added, as if she w

nk they will

not. Who

her's mind until he mentioned the name of Farron. Then he was astonished at

Marty Burke works for! O Pete, don't you think you could g

nk you can get him to us

n for

ed a girl of the neighborhood. Mrs. Wayne was sternly trying to prosecute the inebriate; Burke was determined to protect him, first, by smirching the girl's name, and,

came back from answering it to tell his mother that Mr. Lanley, the grandfather of his love, was asking

s. Wayne, wrinkling her no

new idea, I should say, since 1880. And, Mo

ted the i

ile he's here, I think you might go down and tell this news

ing far too exciting a life

of his mission by arriving out of breath. Adelaide had come to see him just before lunch. She pretended to minimize the importance of

more about him than you

nt had telephoned her from down

ther was a doctor, his mother comes of decent people and is a respected reformer, the young man works

st be put a stop to

r. "But how? I can't forbid him the hous

on the ground that he's not the

e house,"-she spoke with a sort of imperishable swe

you turn her

looked ve

trust me,"

you how it c

know what I mean.' 'It's a very fine day, Mrs. Farron, if you know what I mean.' This you

s ri

shook h

they come. Do you remember the time you took me to West Poin

e only f

s immature

e since one o'clock. He had been told at intervals of fifteen minutes by a resolutely cheerful central that their number did not answer. Mr. Lanley hated peop

o," he kept repeat

was of four windows; they appeared like four square panels of dark blue, patterned with stars. Then a figure rose to meet

bridges, and beyond to Long Island, to just the ground where the Battle of Long Island had been fought-a batt

amp. She sat with her head leaned back against the window-frame, and he saw the fine line of her jaw, the hollows in her cheek, the delicate modeling about her brow

knee on the couc

d to skate as a boy on a pond just

t was a subject which he liked to expound. He loved his native city, which he with his own eyes had seen once as hardly more than a village. He

ncestry, then," she said,

strious-peasants." He hurried on to the great fire of 1835. "Swept between Wall Street and Coenties Slip," he said, with a splendid gesture, and then discovered that she had, never heard of "Quenches Slip," or worse, she had pronounced it as it was spelled. He gently set her right there. His father had often told him that he had seen with his own eyes a note of hand which had be

e days before it bore the elevated trains.) No, he had driven. Ah, she said, that was wholly different. Above, where one walked, there was nothing to shut out the view of the river. J

re such an old New-Yorker-a pier at the foot of East Eighty-something S

it's open. Is it too cold? Have you a fur coat? I'll send back to the house for an extra one

still absent, presumably breaking the

th side of the room, opened it, and looked out. If he h

up, made a motion to jump out, fearing that his employer was being murdered in th

shut the window; as he did so he saw a trace o

smile?" he a

ke of trying to arrest her

u have ever done su

at does

down five

thinking

I did t

staken, utte

ch things, you give so much tim

f his life. Not that he contemplated giving all his orders from the fifth story, but

he motor's lights. They were only a few feet above the water, which was as black as liquid jet, with flat silver and gold patches on it from white

hat she wanted her discovery praised. He never lo

es, was a temptation to Mr. Lanley, and he would have

aid a word yet ab

artificially formed as ours is, Mrs. Wayne, it has always been my experience that-" Do what he would, it kept turning into a speech, and the essence of the speech was that while democracy did very well for men, a strictly aristocratic system was the only thing possible for girls-one's own girls, of course. In the dim light he could see t

ays," she

t sure he

dvantages?

vantages of

inutes to see that quite unconsciously she was making him a strange, distorted complement to his speech, that in her mouth such words as "the leisure classes, your sheltered girls," were terms of the deepest reproach. He must understand, she said, that as s

ame, Lanley at first wonder

rejudice against

oked at him r

nk that? But what has divorce to do with i

e mere suggestion escape

divorced her

did not

is this unconquerable

ughters of the

till qui

islike

ear

en more puzzled. He repeated her words aloud, as if he hoped that they m

fear

ity and self-indulgence, and, all the more because it is so delicate and attractive and unconscious; and their belief th

atching at the first wor

in the French Revolutio

ain of every-day life begins to make demands upon them, their futile education, the moral feebleness that comes w

en Mr. Lanley said with a particul

cribing. It may be that there are some like that-daughters of our mushroom finance; but I ca

f hearing ladies and gentlemen described to her as if they were beings wholly alien to her experience; but the t

s sister, began her most offensive pronouncements. "It has always appeared to me that we shelter ou

are sheltered women the

m question his bringing up of Adelaide. He would no

destructive; having no time to collect new treasure, he simply could not listen to her suggestion that those he most valued were imitation. He hated her for holding such

ad, the chauffeur took the heavy coat from her, and the car

d was visible ov

e said. "Did the o

ing over her long, blue draperies

" she said, "I think I

etter than most people that his

n't hear

ed distr

h a mess of th

is arm a

t then think how magnificently yo