Florence Badger had been a fair little bud at those gatherings, and of course Richard Van Tassel, her gay young partner, was not likely to forget either her or his chum, Lewis Bryant, whom she afterward married. The children of the two families had gone to school together and carried the intimacy on to the next generation; and when Mr. Van Tassel's wife and daughter had been taken from him, more potent to comfort than any other soul had been the gentle invalid, the friend of his youth, whose lines for many years had fallen in hard places.
So, small wonder that the fine house on the lake shore and the shabby home on the back street had kept up an interchange of civilities. These had been chiefly carried on by the young people until Jack had gone to college. After that it was to the Bryants that Richard Van Tassel liked best to carry his boy's letters, and talk over his haps and mishaps, secure of sympathy.
Of late he had not been blind to the fact that the shabby home was growing shabbier, but it was not an easy matter to bestow gifts here. This very spring he had remarked that Clover's eyes looked too large, and that they rested with greater anxiety on her feeble mother. He had even hinted to Mrs. Bryant a trip up into Wisconsin or across the lake; but she had parried the potential offer with gentle firmness.
Many a drive around the parks and boulevards did the invalid take with her daughters in the glistening Van Tassel equipage, greatly to the wonder of certain Hyde Parkers whose experience did not date back to "before the fire."
The owner of the horses was away, that they knew. Jack Van Tassel graduated from Harvard this June, and his father had gone East for the great occasion. Now it was early August, and he had not returned. "It was so lovely of him," many said, "to give poor people like the Bryants the use of his carriage while he was away. A real charity. Not many men would be so thoughtful."
These neighbors wondered if the freedom of the fine equipage extended to the freedom of the house; but this they could not discover, for the Bryants were not talkers unless surrounded by old friends. Hard experience had taught even the young people reserve. Nevertheless it might have been a gratification to these curious ones to know that the Bryants had never taken liberties at the Van Tassel mansion. It had even been interdicted always to the girls by their careful mother to accept a general invitation to sit on the piazzas and rest, when they came home from the sailing expeditions their souls loved.
The house was fascinatingly near the water, and the level lawns about it cool with a fine mossy greenness. The hammocks and rocking chairs on the spacious piazzas gave alluring invitations to recline and study the ever-changing coloring of the illimitable fresh-water sea; and the elm-trees—not even on the boulevards were there such respectable elm-trees as had here been coaxed to endure the harshness of bleak lake-winds.
This being the case, it was hard, Clover and Mildred used to think, and their little sister thought so still, that unless Jack happened to be on hand to give them a specific invitation, they must pass this unused luxury by, and trudge around the corner up the sunny main street, and so on to the sandy roughness of the unpaved avenue they called home. Still they never thought of rebelling. The rule was as fixed as those of the Medes and Persians, and it must be a right one because mother made it.
On the very day that Clover, hard pressed by thoughts that ran in a discouraging circle, disfigured her pretty hands by doing the family washing, Mr. Van Tassel returned to Chicago.
On the following morning the sun was reflected brightly from the wheels of his buggy as he drove a pair of well-groomed horses to the Bryant house. Elsie Bryant, a girl of fourteen, saw him as he drew up before the wooden walk. With a little exclamation of delight she ran down the flight of steps to greet him.