"We're all healthier. Uncle John, because we're better fed; that makes us more agreeable."
"There's more art in the world to make us happier," said Jerrold. "Hallie thinks it's all due to her everlasting bread and butter. Listen to that now!"
From a balcony up there in the moonlight came a delicious burst of melody; a guitar and two voices, and the refrain was taken up from another window, from one corner of the garden, from the roof; all in smooth accord.
"Your group here must be an operatic one," I suggested. But my nephew answered that it was not, but that music—good music—was so common now, and so well taught, that the average was high in both taste and execution.
We sat late that night, my new family bubbling over with things to say, and filling my mind with a confused sense of new advantages, unexplained and only half believed.
I could not bring myself to accept as commonplace facts the unusual excellences so glibly described, and I suppose my silence showed this as well as what I said, for my sister presently intervened with decision:
"We must all stop this for to-night," she said. "John feels as if he was being forcibly fed—he's got to rest. Then I suggest that to-morrow Owen take him in hand—go off for a tramp, why don't you?—and really straighten out things. You see, there are two distinct movements to consider, the unconscious progress that would have taken place anyway in thirty years, and then the deliberate measures adopted by the 'New Lifers,' and it's rather confusing. I've labored with him all the way home now; I think the man's point of view will help."
* * * * *
Owen was a big man with a strong, wholesome face, and a quizzical little smile of his own. He and I went up the river next morning in a swift motor boat, which did not batter the still air with muffled banging as they used to do, and strolled off in the bright spring sunshine into Palisade Park.
"We've saved all the loveliest of it—for keeps," he said. "Out here, where the grass and trees are just as they used to be, you won't be bothered, and one expositor will be easier to handle than four at once. Now, shall I talk, or will you ask questions?"