“No! no! I’m not a wrecker; they bring enough for my modest wants.”
“That’s just what your father said twenty years ago. You’re getting very much like him.”
Floyd didn’t take that as a compliment. The men of twenty years ago were a century behind the times. Then, rather timidly, hoping for a refusal, he said:
“Will you come and take pot-luck with me tonight? My wife’s not well; she can’t join us—I must find some congenial occupation. We’ll talk it over.”
The Colonel was all animation.
“Politics! We need young men. We’ve got a job on our hands to rebuild the world.”
Late in the afternoon they went to the Republican Club for a cocktail from the Colonel’s private stock. There were the usual jokes about Prohibition being a good law—for others. On alighting from the car, Floyd was surprised to see the soft red gleam of the colored glass fixture over the porch. The filmy lace window curtains through which the light shone were not there when he left the house that morning; before he could take out his latch key, the door was swung open. The Jap in spotless white smiled a welcome; they entered the parlor—
“By God,” cried the Colonel, “this is something like. A beautiful color, that velvet.”
Floyd smiled. “Mulberry, they call it.”
The chairs, the sofa with its cushions, were like old friends; he saw again those well-loved water colors; his mother looking down at him, and through the door, the glimpse of a beautifully set dinner table—a picture covered for a long time, once more in the light.