The Finer Grain

f the nursery and the playground; the whole sprawl in especial of the great gregarious fireside: it was a complete social scene in itself, on which types

, of every variety of size and hue, were half smothered between undergrowths of velvet and tapestry and ramifications of marble and bronze. The fauna and the flora startled him alike, and among them his bruised spirit drew in and folded its wings. But he roamed and rested, exploring and in a manner enjoying the vast rankness-in the depth of which he suddenly encountered Mrs. Folliott, whom he had l

ts, or almost, without offence. It was always a link to have scuffled, failing a real scratch, with such a character; and he had at present the flutter of feeling that something of this would abide. He hadn't been hurrying home, at the London time, in any case; he was doing nothing then, and had continued to do it; he would want, before showing suspicion-that had been his attitude-to have more, after all, to go upon. Mrs. Folliott also, and with a great actual profession of it, remembered and re

yearningly reach out to her-so decidedly, by the morning's end, and that of his scattered sombre stations, had he been sated with meaningless contacts, with the sense of people all about him intensely, though harmlessly, animated, yet at the same time raspingly indifferent. They would have, he and she at least, their common pang-through which fact, somehow, he should feel less stranded. It wasn't that he wanted to be pitied-he fairly didn't pity himself; he winced, rather, and even t

e abused the author of their wrongs-recognising thus too Monteith's right to loathe him-for the desperado he assuredly had proved, but with a vulgarity of analysis and an incapacity for the higher criticism, as her listener felt it to be, which made him determine resentfully, almost grimly, that she shouldn't have the benefit of a grain of his vision or his version of what had befallen them, and of how, in particular, it had come; and should never dream thereby (though much would she suffer from that!) of how interesting he might have been. She had, in a finer sense, no manners, and to be concerned with her in any retrospect was-since their discourse was of losses-to feel the dignity of history incur the very gravest. It was true that such fantasies, or that any shade of inward irony, would be Greek to Mrs. Folliott. It was also true, however, and not much more strange, when she had presently the comparatively happy thought of "Lunch with us, you poor dear!" and mentioned three or four of her "crowd"-a new crowd, ra

e was in fact about to perform this manoeuvre when he was checked by the jolly young woman he had been having on his left and who had more to say about the Hotels, up and down the town, than he had ever known a young woman to have to say on any subject at all; she expressed herself in hotel terms excl

-in-law, Mr. Monteith's arrival-Mr. Mark P. Monteith, wasn't it?-and where he was, and she had been with him, three days before, at the time; whereupon he had said "Hullo, what can have brought old Mark back?" He seemed to have believed-Newton had seemed-that that shirker, as he called him, never would come; and she guessed tha

pretty girl was sorry to have to say in return to this that her sister wasn't living-had died two years after marrying; so that Newton was up there in Fiftieth Street alone; where (in explanation of his being "down") he had been shut

n as, with her single twist, she just charmingly hunched

elf: "Well, I'm goi

-every man in New York is. But Newton isn't a lady, unfortunately for hi

wful?"-he was qu

ve got yo

s his sincere tribute to the note he had had on Friday morning f

or others. Fit him

er straight attack and her free awkwardness-also with her difference from the others through something of a sense and a distinction given her by so clearly havin