The Readjustment

beginning, came with that house-party of the Masters's. The victory of his smile on the staircase he followed up that evening to a general conquest. Fo

the wit of poked fingers-especially if it be sauced by personality-rules at the board. After the punch had worked sunshine in

and right. Dr. French asked him to motor out to the Cliff House that very night; Mrs. Masters wanted him to dinner; Harry Banks mus

. "That's the reward of naught

d to smash his face

e quite conquered him. I'll see you

eless social scrutinies would such a sudden rise have 147 been possible. His furnished room, where he used to read and study of evenings in his years of beginnings, knew him no more before midnight. He dropped away from those comrades of the lower sort with whom he had found his recreation; abandoned and forgotten were his old lights of love. The milliner's apprentice, a coarsely pre

rancisco revolved; he had broken into a half a dozen circles of women society; he had become hail-fellow-well-met with the younger sons of the cocktail route, the loud characters of flashy Latin quarter 148 studios, the returned Arctic m

not the worst brain-revive in ten thousand men the primeval brute. He frolicked with trifling painters, bookless poets, apprentice journalists, and the girls who accrued to all these, through wild

il route, recognized him; immediately, he was riding shoulder high. His bearers broke for the sidewalk, and down Market Street he went, a blue-and-gold serpentine dancing behind him. There was his first Jinks at the Bohemian club-an impromptu affair, thrown in between the revelling Christmas Jinks in the clubhouse and the formally artistic Midsummer High Jinks in the Russian River Grove. The Sire, noting his smile and figure, impressed him into service for a small

lliant nor circles so convivial as when he was very young. It was not in him to know that neither times nor m

heet straight from the mills of the gods, had now a faint scratching upon it. The mouth was looser in repose, firmer in action; the roving and merry eye was more certain, more accurate as it were, in its glances. His youthful assurance had changed in him

Indeed, he became of distinct value to the office through the business which he brought in from his wandering and his revelling. It see

nce, his good-natured gambols of the Newfoundland pup order, transformed that somewhat serious and faded ménage, gave it light and interest, as from a baby in the house. Although Mrs. Tiffany mothered him, gave him her errands to do, she made no mistake about the

more compliments to grey eyes; he paid no compliments at all. When they were alone, he entertained her with those new tales of his associations in the city, which pleased

l pleasure that the two girls were a great deal together. He found them exchanging the coin of feminine friendship in Eleanor's living-room, he met them on shopping excursions in Post street. When the three met so, Kate always sparkled with her best wit, her most cheerful manner; but she showed, too, a kind of 153 deference toward Elea