They were in a manner neighbors, for Larch Avenue was the next street to Maple Place. Both streets were now given over to what is termed decayed gentility. The larches were old and ragged and brown with clustering cones, and the blue blood of the denizens had grown a little sluggish.
Miss Honoria Barry and her small niece lived together, with a tall and gaunt handmaiden Norman French, and a broad Yorkshire gardener. Miss Barry was the old cream of Yerbury. Here her family had lived since the Huguenot persecution, and dwindled finally to two. Louis Barry was a dissipated spendthrift. He married, and tormented his wife into an early grave, and might have worn out his sister, but Providence kindly removed him. Miss Honoria retrenched, paid off debts and mortgage by degrees, and brought up Sylvie in a quaint, refined, old-world fashion.
Old Mrs. Darcy and Miss Barry exchanged formal calls, and discussed la belle France. Sylvie took great delight in listening to grandmother's stories of brave heroes and handsome women who figured in old legends.
Oddly enough, one of the many points of agreement between Jack and Fred had been their aversion to girls in general. Fred judged them from his sisters, who were always nagging, always exhorting him to be a gentleman, and always holding up Jack Darcy to ridicule. Jack, on the other hand, had a bashful fear of girls, and fancied they were laughing at every little awkwardness; then they cried so easily, went off in a huff if they could not have their own way, were silly, vain, and tattling, ready enough to beg your assistance if there was a munching cow by the roadside, a worm swinging from a tree, or a harmless mouse running across the floor. The great fascination to the Darcy house was, that the boys could sit in the large, clean kitchen, trying all sorts of crude experiments, with Ann to clear away the débris and find no fault. Jack never wanted to go to the great house. In true boy fashion he understood without any explanation. But they both liked little Sylvie. She was taught at home except in music and drawing, and she was as much interested in grandmother's heroes as the two boys.
On the other hand, the Hopes and the Barrys had always been great friends; and, from some odd freak of unlikeness, Sylvie and Irene Lawrence carried on the intimacy.
She stopped now, and talked about the kitten with Jack; and he carried her milk-pail home to the gate.
It was a long, wearisome vacation to poor Jack. Fishing lost its charm, even tramps in the woods became monotonous. He spent hours in his father's shop, inspecting machinery, though he seldom asked a question or ventured upon a remark. Indeed, some of the hands thought "Darcy's boy wasn't over-bright." Yet here he laid the foundation of the problem that was to vex and puzzle his soul in after-years. Here was the great, whirring machinery, belts, bands, spindles, looms, and oftentimes a stupid and stolid enough workman at one end, grinding out luxury and elegance for David Lawrence, Esq.; that his family might tread on Wilton and Axminster, dine from silver and crystal, dress in silks and velvets, drive about with high-stepping bays, and scorn all beneath them. Once as Jack was thinking it over he laughed aloud.
"You must feel very much amused," said a rather sour-looking man standing near by, with a peculiar touchiness as if he had been laughed at.
"No, I wasn't amused, I was only thinking"— But Jack stopped in the middle of his sentence. Could this man take any such position as that of Mr. Lawrence?
Then he came across a volume of self-made men, which he eagerly devoured. Every one seemed to have commenced life without a dollar, and almost without friends. Were those the important factors in the race, to be light-weighted? And he had a triple chain.