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THE ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING

AT SIGHT OF HER THE DOCTOR LEAPED FORWARD WITH A LOW CRY (p. 174)

THE ROAD

TO UNDERSTANDING

BY

ELEANOR H. PORTER

Author of "Just David"

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY ELEANOR H. PORTER

TO

MY FRIEND

Miss Grace Wheeler

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

From drawings by Mary Greene Blumenschein

CHAPTER I

FROSTED CAKES AND SHOTGUNS

If Burke Denby had not been given all the frosted cakes and toy shotguns he wanted at the age of ten, it might not have been so difficult to convince him at the age of twenty that he did not want to marry Helen Barnet.

Mabel, the beautiful and adored wife of John Denby, had died when Burke was four years old; and since that time, life, for Burke, had been victory unseasoned with defeat. A succession of "anything-for-peace" rulers of the nursery, and a father who could not bring himself to be the cause of the slightest shadow on the face of one who was the breathing image of his lost wife, had all contributed to these victories.

Nor had even school-days brought the usual wholesome discipline and democratic leveling; for a pocketful of money and a naturally generous disposition made a combination not to be lightly overlooked by boys and girls ever alert for "fun"; and an influential father and the scarcity of desirable positions made another combination not to be lightly overlooked by impecunious teachers anxious to hold their "jobs." It was easy to ignore minor faults, especially as the lad had really a brilliant mind, and (when not crossed) a most amiable disposition.

Between the boy and his father all during the years of childhood and youth, the relationship was very beautiful—so beautiful that the entire town saw it and expressed its approval: in public by nods and admiring adjectives; in private by frequent admonitions to wayward sons and thoughtless fathers to follow the pattern so gloriously set for them.

Of all this John Denby saw nothing; nor would he have given it a thought if he had seen it. John Denby gave little thought to anything, after his wife died, except to business and his boy, Burke. Business, under his skillful management and carefully selected assistants, soon almost ran itself. There was left then only the boy, Burke.

From the first they were comrades, even when comradeship meant the poring over a Mother Goose story-book, or mastering the intricacies of a game of tiddledywinks. Later, together, they explored the world of music, literature, science, and art, spending the long summer playtimes, still together, traveling in both well-known and little-known lands.

Toward everything fine and beautiful and luxurious the boy turned as a flower turns toward the light, which pleased the man greatly. And as the boy had but to express a wish to have it instantly find an echo in his father's heart, it is not strange, perhaps, that John Denby did not realize that, notwithstanding all his "training," self-control and self-sacrifice were unknown words to his son.

One word always, however, was held before the boy from the very first—mother; yet it was not as a word, either, but as a living presence. Always he was taught that she was with them, a bright, beauteous, gracious being, loving, tender, perfect. Whatever they saw was seen through her eyes. Whatever they did was done as with her. Stories of her beauty, charm, and goodness filled many an hour of intimate talk. She was the one flawless woman born into the world—so said Burke's father to his son.

Burke was nearly twenty-one, and half through college, when he saw Helen Barnet. She was sitting in the big west window in the library, with the afternoon sun turning her wonderful hair to gold. In her arms she held a sleeping two-year-old boy. With the marvelous light on her face, and the crimson velvet draperies behind her, she looked not unlike a pictured Madonna. It was not, indeed, until a very lifelike red swept to the roots of the girl's hair that the young man, staring at her from the doorway, realized that she was not, in truth, a masterpiece on an old-time wall, but a very much alive, very much embarrassed young woman in his father's library.

With a blush that rivaled hers, and an incoherent apology, he backed hastily from the room. He went then in search of his father. He had returned from college an hour before to find his father's youngest sister, Eunice, and her family, guests in the house. But this stranger—this bewilderingly beautiful girl—

In the upper hall he came face to face with his father.

"Dad, who in Heaven's name is she?" he demanded without preamble.

"She?"

"That exquisitely beautiful girl in the library. Who is she?"

"In the library? Girl? Nonsense! You're dreaming, Burke. There's no one here but your aunt."

"But I just came from there. I saw her. She held a child in her arms."

"Ho!" John Denby gave a gesture as if tossing a trivial something aside. "You're dreaming again, Burke. The nursemaid, probably. Your aunt brought one with her. But, see here, son. I was looking for you. Come into my room. I wanted to know—" And he plunged into a subject far removed from nursemaids and their charges.

Burke, however, was not to be so lightly diverted. True, he remained for ten minutes at his father's side, and he listened dutifully to what his father said; but the day was not an hour older before he had sought and found the girl he had seen in the library.

She was not in the library now. She was on the wide veranda, swinging the cherubic boy in the hammock. To Burke she looked even more bewitching than she had before. As a pictured saint, hung about with the aloofness of the intangible and the unreal, she had been beautiful and alluring enough; but now, as a breathing, moving creature treading his own familiar veranda and touching with her white hands his own common hammock, she was bewilderingly enthralling.

Combating again an almost overwhelming desire to stand in awed worship, he advanced hastily, speaking with a diffidence and an incoherence utterly foreign to his usual blithe boyishness.

"Oh, I hope—I didn't, did I? Did I wake—the baby up?"

With a start the girl turned, her blue eyes wide.

"You? Oh, in the library—"

"Yes; an hour ago. I do hope I didn't—wake him up!"

Before the ardent admiration in the young man's eyes, the girl's fell.

"Oh, no, sir. He just—woke himself."

"Oh, I'm so glad! And—and I want you to forgive me for—for staring at you so rudely. You see, I was so surprised to—to see you there like—like a picture, and— You will forgive me—er— I don't know your name."

"Barnet—Helen Barnet." She blushed prettily; then she laughed, throwing him a mischievous glance. "Oh, yes, I'll forgive you; but—I don't know your name, either."

"Thank you. I knew you'd—understand. I'm Denby—Burke Denby."

"Mr. Denby's son?"

"Yes."

"Oh-h!"

At the admiration in her eyes and voice he unconsciously straightened himself.

"And do you live—here?" breathed the girl.

To hide the inexplicable emotion that seemed suddenly to be swelling within him, the young man laughed lightly.

"Of course—when I'm not away!" His eyes challenged her, and she met the sally with a gurgle of laughter.

"Oh, I meant—when you're not away," she bridled.

He watched the wild-rose color sweep to her temples—and stepped nearer.

"But you haven't told me a thing of yourself—yet," he complained.

She sighed—and at the sigh an unreasoning wrath against an unknown something rose within him.

"There's nothing to tell," she murmured. "I'm just here—a nurse to Master Paul and his brother." Denby's wrath became reasoning and definite. It was directed against the world in general, and his aunt in particular, that they should permit for one instant this glorious creature to sacrifice her charm and sweetness on the altar of menial services to a couple of unappreciative infants.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" he breathed, plainly aglow at the intimate nearness of this heart-to-heart talk. "But I'm glad—you're here!"

Once more, before he turned reluctantly away, he gazed straight into her blue eyes—and the game was on.

It was a pretty game. The young man was hard hit, and it was his first wound from Cupid's dart. Heretofore in his curriculum girls had not been included; and the closeness of his association with his father had not been conducive to incipient love affairs. Perhaps, for these reasons, he was all the more ardent a wooer. Certainly an ardent wooer he was. There was no gainsaying that—though the boy himself, at first, did not recognize it as wooing at all.

It began with pity.

He was so sorry for her—doomed to slave all day for those two rascally small boys. He could not keep her out of his mind. As he tramped the hills the next morning the very blue of the sky and the softness of the air against his cheek became a pain to him—she was tied to a stuffy nursery. His own freedom of will and movement became a source of actual vexation—she was bound to a "do this" and a "do that" all day. He wondered then, suddenly, if he could not in some way help. He sought her as soon as possible.

"Come, I want you to go to walk with me. I want to show you the view from Pike's Hill," he urged.

"Me? To walk? Why, Mr. Denby, I can't!"

Again the wild-rose flush came and went—and again Burke Denby stepped nearer.

"Why not?"

"Why, I couldn't leave the children; besides—it's Master Paul's nap hour."

"What a pity—when it's so beautiful out! To-morrow, then, in the morning?"

She shook her head.

"I couldn't, Mr. Denby."

"The afternoon, then?"

"No."

"Is it because you don't want to?"

"Want to!"

At the look of longing that leaped to her face, the thwarted youth felt again the fierce wrath he had known the first day of their meeting.

"Then, by Jove, you shall!" he vowed. "Don't they ever give you any time to yourself?"

She dimpled into shy laughter.

"I shall have a few hours Thursday—after three."

"Good! I'll remember. We'll go then."

And they went.

To Burke Denby it was a wonderful and a brand-new experience. Never had the sky been so blue, the air so soft, the woods so enchantingly beautiful. And he was so glad that they were thus—for her. She was enjoying it so much, and he was so glad that he could give this happiness to her! Enthusiastically he pointed out here a bird and there a flower; carefully he helped her over every stick and stone; determinedly he set himself to making her forget her dreary daily tasks. And when she lifted her wondering eyes to his face, or placed her half-reluctant fingers in his extended hand, how he thrilled and tingled through his whole being—he had not supposed that unselfish service to a fellow-being could bring to one such a warm sense of gratification.

At the top of the hill they sat down to rest, before them the wonderful panorama of grandeur—the green valley, the silvery river, the far-reaching mauve and purple mountains.

"My, isn't this real pretty!" exclaimed the girl.

HE WAS LOOKING AT HER LOVELY, GLORIFIED FACE

The young man scarcely heard the words, else he would have frowned unconsciously at the "real pretty." He was looking at her lovely, glorified face.

"I thought you'd like it," he breathed.

"Oh, I do."

"I know another just as fine. We'll go there next."

A shadow like a cloud crossed her face.

"But I have so little time!"

The cloud leaped to his face now and became thunderous.

"Shucks! I forgot. What a nuisance! Oh, I say, you know, I don't think you ought to be doing—such work. Do you—forgive me, but do you really—have to?"

"Yes, I have to."

She had turned her face half away, but he thought he could see tears in her eyes.

"Are you—all alone, then? Haven't you any—people?" His voice had grown very tender.

"No—no one. Father died, then mother. There was no one else—to care; and no—money."

"Oh, I'm so—so sorry!"

He spoke awkwardly, with obvious restraint. He wanted suddenly to take her in his arms—to soothe and comfort her as one would a child. But she was not a child, and it would not do, of course. But she looked so forlorn, so appealing, so sweet, so absolutely dear—

He got abruptly to his feet.

"Come, come, this will never do!" he exclaimed blithely. "Here I am—making you talk of your work and your troubles, when I took you up here with the express intention of making you forget them. Suppose we go through this little path here. There's a dandy spring of cold water farther on. And—and forgive me, please. I won't make you—talk any more."

And he would not, indeed, he vowed to himself. She was no child. She was a young woman grown, and a very beautiful one, at that. He could not console her with a kiss and a caress, and a bonbon, of course. But he could give her a bit of playtime, now and then—and he would, too. He would see to it that, for the rest of her stay under his father's roof, she should not want for the companionship of some one who—who "cared." He would be her kind and thoughtful good friend. Indeed, he would!

Burke Denby began the very next morning to be a friend to Miss Barnet. Accepting as irrevocable the fact that she could not be separated from her work, he made no plans that did not include Masters Paul and Percy Allen.

"I'm going to take your sons for a drive this morning, if you don't mind," he said briskly to his aunt at the breakfast table.

"Mind? Of course I don't, you dear boy," answered the pleased mother, fondly. "You're the one that will mind—as you'll discover, I fear, when you find yourself with a couple of mischievous small boys on your hands!"

"I'm not worrying," laughed the youth. "I shall take Miss Barnet along, too."

"Oh—Helen? That's all right, then. You'll do nicely with her," smiled Mrs. Allen, as she rose from the table. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go and see that the boys are made ready for their treat."

Burke Denby took the boys for a drive almost every day after that. He discovered that Miss Barnet greatly enjoyed driving. There were picnics, too, in the cool green of the woods, on two or three fine days. Miss Barnet also liked picnics. Still pursuant of his plan to give the forlorn little nursemaid "one good time in her life," Burke Denby contrived to be with her not a little in between drives and picnics. Ostensibly he was putting up swings, building toy houses, playing ball with Masters Paul and Percy Allen; but in reality he was trying to put a little "interest" into Miss Helen Barnet's daily task. He was so sorry for her! It was such a shame that so gloriously beautiful a girl should be doomed to a slavery like that! He was so glad that for a time he might bring some brightness into her life!

"And do you see how perfectly devoted Burke is to Paul and Percy?" cried Mrs. Allen, one day, to her brother. "I had no idea the dear boy was so fond of children!"

"Hm-m. Is he really, indeed," murmured John Denby. "No, I had not noticed."

John Denby spoke vaguely, yet with a shade of irritation. Fond as he was of his sister and of his small nephews, he was finding it difficult to accustom himself to the revolutionary changes in his daily routine that their presence made necessary. He was learning to absent himself more and more from the house.

For a week, therefore, unchallenged, and cheerfully intent on his benevolent mission, Burke Denby continued his drives and picnics and ball-playing with Masters Paul and Percy Allen; then, very suddenly, four little words from the lips of Helen Barnet changed for him the earth and the sky above.

"When I go away—" she began.

"When you—go—away!" he interrupted.

"Yes. Why, Mr. Denby, what makes you look so—queer?"

"Nothing. I was thinking—that is, I had forgotten—I—" He rose to his feet abruptly, and crossed the room. At the window, for a full minute, he stood motionless, looking out at the falling rain. When he turned back into the room there was a new expression on his face. With a quick glance at the children playing on the rug before the fireplace, he crossed straight to the plainly surprised young woman and dropped himself in a chair at her side.

"Helen Barnet, will you—marry me?" he asked softly.

"Mr. Denby!"

With a boyish laugh Burke Denby drew his chair nearer. His face was alight with the confident happiness of one who has never known rebuff.

"You are surprised—and so was I, a minute ago. You see, it came to me all in a flash—what it would be to live—without you." His voice grew tender. "Helen, you will stay, and be my wife?"

"Oh, no, no—I mustn't, I can't! Why, of course I can't, Mr. Denby," fluttered the girl, in a panic of startled embarrassment. "I'm sure you—you don't want me to."

"But I do. Listen!" He threw another quick glance at the absorbed children as he reached out and took possession of her hand. "It all came to me, back there at the window—the dreariness, the emptiness of—everything, without you. And I saw then what you've been to me every day this past week. How I've watched for you and waited for you, and how everything I did and said and had was just—something for you. And I knew then that I—I loved you. You see, I—I never loved any one before,"—the boyish red swept to his forehead as he laughed whimsically,—"and so I—I didn't recognize the symptoms!" With the lightness of his words he was plainly trying to hide the shake in his voice. "Helen, you—will?"

"Oh, but I—I—!" Her eyes were frightened and pleading.

"Don't you care at all?"

She turned her head away.

"If you don't, then won't you let me make you care?" he begged. "You said you had no one now to care—at all; and I care so much! Won't you let—"

Somewhere a door shut.

With a low cry Helen Barnet pulled away her hand and sprang to her feet. She was down on the rug with the children, very flushed of face, when Mrs. Allen appeared in the library doorway.

"Oh, here you are!" Mrs. Allen frowned and spoke a bit impatiently. "I've been hunting everywhere for you. I supposed you were in the nursery. Won't you put the boys into fresh suits? I have friends calling soon, and I want the children brought to the drawing-room when I ring, and left till I call you again."

"Yes, ma'am."

With a still more painful flush on her face Helen Barnet swept the blocks into her apron, rose to her feet, and hurried the children from the room. She did not once glance at the young man standing by the window.

Mrs. Allen tossed her nephew a smile and a shrug which might have been translated into "You see what we have to endure—so tiresome!" as she, too, disappeared.

Burke Denby did not smile. He did frown, however. He felt vaguely irritated and abused. He wished his aunt would not be so "bossy" and disagreeable. He wished Helen would not act so cringingly submissive. As if she— But then, it would be different right away, of course, as soon as he had made known the fact that she was to be his wife. Everything would be different. For that matter, Helen herself would be different. Not only would she hold her head erect and take her proper place, but she would not—well, there were various little ways and expressions which she would drop, of course. And how beautiful she was! How sweet! How dear! And how she had suffered in her loneliness! How he would love to make for her a future all gloriously happy and tender with his strong, encircling arms!

It was a pleasant picture. Burke Denby's heart quite swelled within him as he turned to leave the room.

Upstairs, the girl, the cause of it all, hurried with palpitating nervousness through the task of clothing two active little bodies in fresh garments. That her thoughts were not with her fingers was evident; but not until the summoning bell from the drawing-room gave her a few minutes' respite from duty did she have an opportunity really to think. Even then she could not think lucidly or connectedly. Always before her eyes was Burke Denby's face, ardent, pleading, confident. And he expected— Before she saw him again she must be ready, she knew, with her answer. But how could she answer?

Helen Barnet was lonely, heartsick, and frightened—a combination that could hardly aid in the making of a wise, unprejudiced decision, especially when one was very much in love. And Helen Barnet knew that she was that.

Less than two years before, Helen Barnet had been the petted daughter of a village storekeeper in a small Vermont town. Then, like the proverbial thunderbolt, had come death and financial disaster, throwing her on her own resources. And not until she had attempted to utilize those resources for her support, had she found how frail they were.

Though the Barnets had not been wealthy, the village store had been profitable; and Helen (the only child) had been almost as greatly overindulged as was Burke Denby himself. Being a very pretty girl, she had become the village belle before she donned long dresses. Having been shielded from work and responsibility, and always carefully guarded from everything unpleasant, she was poorly equipped for a struggle of any sort, even aside from the fact that there was, apparently, nothing that she could do well enough to be paid for doing it. In the past twenty months she had obtained six positions—and had abandoned five of them: two because of incompetency, two because of lack of necessary strength, one because her beauty was plainly making the situation intolerable. For three months now she had been nurse to Masters Paul and Percy Allen. She liked Mrs. Allen, and she liked the children. But the care, the confinement, the never-ending task of dancing attendance upon the whims and tempers of two active little boys, was proving to be not a little irksome to young blood unused to the restraints of self-sacrifice. Then, suddenly, there had come the visit to the Denby homestead, and the advent into her life of Burke Denby; and now here, quite within her reach, if she could believe her eyes and ears, was this dazzling, unbelievable thing—Burke Denby's love.

Helen Barnet knew all about love. Had she not lisped its praises in odes to the moon in her high-school days? It had to do with flowers and music and angels. On the old porch back home—what was it that long-haired boy used to read to her? Oh, Tennyson. That was it.

And now it had come to her—love. Not that it was exactly unexpected: she had been waiting for her lover since she had put up her hair, of course. But to have him come like this—and such a lover! So rich—and he was such a grand, handsome young man, too! And she loved him. She loved him dearly. If only she dared say "yes"! No more poverty, no more loneliness, no more slaving at the beck and call of some hated employer. Oh, if she only dared!

For one delirious moment Helen Barnet almost thought she did—dare. Then, bitterly, the thought of his position—and hers—rolled in upon her. Whatever else the last two wretched years had done for her, it had left her no illusions. She had no doubts as to her reception, as Burke Denby's wife, at the hands of Burke Denby's friends and relatives. And again, whatever the last two years had done for her, they had not robbed her of her pride. And the Barnets, away back in the little Vermont town, had been very proud. To Helen Barnet now, therefore, the picture of herself as Burke Denby's wife, flouted and frowned upon by Burke Denby's friends, was intolerable. Frightened and heartsick, she determined to beat a hasty retreat. It simply could not be. That was all. Very likely, anyway, Burke Denby had not been more than half in earnest himself.

The bell rang then again from the drawing-room, and Helen went down to get the children. In the hall she met Burke Denby; but she only shook her head in answer to his low "Helen, when may I see you?" and hurried by without a word, her face averted.

Three times again within the next twenty-four hours she pursued the same tactics, only to be brought up sharply at last against a peremptory "Helen, you shall let me talk to you a minute! Why do you persist in hiding behind those two rascally infants all the time, when you know that you have only to say the word, and you are as free as the air?"

"But I must—that is—I can't say the word, Mr. Denby. Truly I can't!"

His face fell a little.

"What do you mean? You can't mean—you can't mean—you won't—marry me?"

She threw a hurried look about her. He had drawn her into the curtained bay window of the upper hallway, as she was passing on to the nursery.

"Yes, I mean—that," she panted, trying to release her arm from his clasp.

"Helen! Do you mean you don't care?" he demanded passionately.

"Yes, yes—that's what I mean." She pulled again at her arm.

"Helen, look at me. You can't look me straight in the eye and say you don't—care!"

"Oh, yes, I can. I—I—" The telltale color flooded her face. With a choking little breath she turned her head quite away.

"You do—you do! And you shall marry me!" breathed the youth, his lips almost brushing the soft hair against her ear.

"No, no, Mr. Denby, I can't—I—can't!" With a supreme effort she wrenched herself free and fled down the hall.

If Helen Barnet thought this settled the matter, she ill-judged the nature of the man with whom she had to deal. Unlimited frosted cakes and shotguns had not taught Burke Denby to accept no for an answer—especially for an answer to something he had so set his heart upon as he had this winning of Helen Barnet for his wife.

Burke Denby did not know anything about love. He had never sung odes to the moon, or read Tennyson to pretty girls on secluded verandas. He had not been looking for love to meet him around the bend of the next street. Love had come now as an Event, capitalized. Love was Life, and Life was Heaven—if it might be passed with Helen Barnet at his side. Without her it would be— But Burke ignored the alternative. It was not worth considering, anyway, for of course she would be at his side.

She loved him; he was sure of that. This fancied obstacle in the way that loomed so large in her eyes, he did not fear in the least. He really rather liked it. It added zest and excitement, and would make his final triumph all the more heart-warming and satisfying. He had only to convince Helen, of course, and the mere convincing would not be without its joy and compensation.

It was with really pleasurable excitement, therefore, that Burke Denby laid his plans and carried them to the triumphant finish of a carefully arranged tête-à-tête in the library, when he knew that they would have at least half an hour to themselves.

"There, I've got you now, you little wild thing!" he cried, closing the library door, and standing determinedly with his back to it, as she made a frightened move to go, at finding herself alone with him.

"But, Mr. Denby, I can't. I really must go," she palpitated.

"No, you can't go. I've had altogether too much trouble getting you here, and getting those blessed youngsters safely away with their mamma for a bit of a drive with my dad."

"Then you planned this?"

"I did." He was regarding her with half-quizzical, wholly fond eyes. "And I had you summoned to the library—but I was careful not to say who wanted you. Oh, Helen, Helen, how can you seek to avoid me like this, when you know how I love you!" There was only tenderness now in his voice and manner. He had taken both her hands in his.

"But you mustn't love me."

"Not love—my wife?"

"I'm not your wife."

"You're going to be, dear."

"I can't. I told you I couldn't, Mr. Denby."

"My name is 'Burke,' my love."

His voice was whimsically light again. Very plainly Mr. Burke Denby was not appreciating the seriousness of the occasion.

She flushed and bit her lip.

"I think it's real mean of you to—to make it so hard for me!" she half sobbed.

With sudden passion he caught her in his arms.

"Hard? Hard? Then if it's hard, it means you do love me. As if I'd give you up now! Helen, why do you torture me like this? Dearest, when will you marry me?"

She struggled feebly in his arms.

"I told you; never."

"Why not?"

No answer.

"Helen, why not?" He loosened his clasp and held her off at arms' length.

"Because."

"Because what?"

No answer again.

"You aren't—promised to any one else?" For the first time a shadow of uneasy doubt crossed his face.

She shook her head.

"Oh, no."

"Then what is it?"

Her eyes, frightened and pleading, searched his face. There was a tense moment of indecision. Then in a tragic burst it came.

"Maybe you think I'd—marry you, and be your wife, and have all your folks look down on me!"

"Look down on you?"

"Yes, because I'm not so swell and grand as they are. I'm only—"

With a quick cry he caught her to himself again, and laid a reproving finger on her lips.

"Hush! Don't you let me hear you say that again—those horrid words! You are you, yourself, the dearest, sweetest little woman that was ever made, and I love you, and I'm going to marry you. Look down on you, indeed! I'd like to see them try it!"

"But they will. I'm only a nurse-girl."

"Hush!" He almost shook her in his wrath. "I tell you, you are you—and that's all I want to know. And that's all anybody will want to know. I'm not in love with your ancestors, or with your relatives, or your friends. I don't love you because you are, or are not, a nurse-girl, or a school-teacher, or a butterfly of fashion. I even don't love you because your eyes are blue, or because your wonderful hair is like the softest of spun gold. It's just because you are you, sweetheart; and you, just you, are the whole wide world to me!"

"But—your father?"

"He will love you because I love you. Dad is my good chum—he's always been that. What I love, he'll love. You'll see."

"Do you think he really will?" A dawning hope was coming into her eyes.

"I'm sure he will. Why, dad is the other half of myself. Always, all the way up, dad has been like that. And everything I've wanted, he's always let me have."

She drew a tremulous breath of surrender.

"Well, of course, if I thought you all wanted me—"

"Want you!" With his impulsive lips on hers she had her answer, and there Burke Denby found his.

CHAPTER II

AN ONLY SON

Proud, and blissfully happy in his victory, Burke went to his father; and to his father (so far as the latter himself was concerned) he carried a bombshell.

For two reasons John Denby had failed to see what was taking place in his own home. First, because it would never have occurred to him that his son could fall in love with a nursemaid; secondly, because he had systematically absented himself from the house during the most of his sister's visit, preferring to take his sister away with him for drives and walks rather than to stay in the noisy confusion of toys and babies that his home had become. Because of all this, therefore, he was totally unprepared for what his son was bringing to him.

He welcomed the young man with affectionate heartiness.

"Well, my boy, it's good to see you! Where have you been keeping yourself all these two weeks?"

"Why, dad, I've been right here—in fact, I've been very much right here!"

The conscious color that crept to the boy's forehead should have been illuminating. But it was not.

"Yes, yes, very likely, very likely," frowned the man. "But, of course, with so many around— But soon we'll be by ourselves again. Not but what I'm enjoying your aunt's visit, of course," he added hastily. "But here are two weeks of your vacation gone, and I've scarcely seen you a minute."

"Yes; and that's one thing I wanted to talk about—college," plunged in the boy. "I've decided I don't want to finish my course, dad. I'd rather go into business right away."

The man drew his brows together, but did not look entirely displeased.

"Hm-m, well," he hesitated. "While I should hate not to see you graduated, yet—it's not so bad an idea, after all. I'd be glad to have you here for good that much earlier, son. But why this sudden right-about-face? I thought you were particularly keen for that degree."

Again the telltale color flamed in the boyish cheeks.

"I was—once. But, you see, then I wasn't thinking of—getting married."

"Married!" To John Denby it seemed suddenly that a paralyzing chill clutched his heart and made it skip a beat. This possible future marriage of his son, breaking into their close companionship, was the dreaded shadow that loomed ever ahead. "Nonsense, boy! Time enough to think of that when you've found the girl."

"But I have found her, dad."

John Denby paled perceptibly.

"You have—what?" he demanded. "You don't mean that you've— Who is she?"

"Helen. Why, dad, you seem surprised," laughed the boy. "Haven't you noticed—suspected?"

"Well, no I haven't," retorted the man grimly. "Why should I? I never heard of the young lady before. What is this—some college tomfoolery? I might have known, I suppose, what would happen."

"College! Why, dad, she's here. You know her. It's Helen,—Miss Barnet."

"Here! There's no one here but your aunt and—" He stopped, and half started from his chair. "You don't—you can't mean—your aunt's nursemaid!"

At the scornful emphasis an indignant red dyed the boy's face.

"I didn't think that of you, dad," he rebuked.

Angry as he was, the man was conscious of the hurt the words gave him. But he held his ground.

"And I did not think this of you, Burke," he rejoined coldly.

"You mean—"

"I mean that I supposed my son would show some consideration as to the woman he chose for his wife."

"Father!" The boyish face set into stern lines. The boyish figure drew itself erect with a majesty that would have been absurd had it not been so palpably serious. "I can't stand much of this sort of thing, even from you. Miss Barnet is everything that is good and true and lovely. She is in every way worthy—more than worthy. Besides, she is the woman I love—the woman I have asked to be my wife. Please remember that when you speak of her."

John Denby laughed lightly. Sharp words had very evidently been on the end of his tongue, when, with a sudden change of countenance, he relaxed in his chair, and said:—

"Well done, Burke. Your sentiments do you credit, I'm sure. But aren't we getting a little melodramatic? I feel as if I were on the stage of a second-rate theater! However, I stand corrected; and we'll speak very respectfully of the lady hereafter. I have no doubt she is very good and very lovely, as you say; but"—his mouth hardened a little—"I must still insist that she is no fit wife for my son."

"Why not?"

"Obvious reasons."

"I suppose you mean—because she has to work for her living," flashed the boy. "But that—excuse me—seems to me plain snobbishness. And I must say again I didn't think it of you, dad. I supposed—"

"Come, come, this has gone far enough," interrupted the distraught, sorely tried father of an idolized son. "You're only a boy. You don't know your own mind. You'll fancy yourself in love a dozen times yet before the time comes for you to marry."

"I'm not a boy. I'm a man grown."

"You're not twenty-one yet."

"I shall be next month. And I do know my own mind. You'll see, father, when I'm married."

"But you're not going to be married at present. And you're never going to marry this nursemaid."

"Father!"

"I mean what I say."

"You won't give your consent?"

"Never!"

"Then— I'll do it without, after next month."

There was a tense moment of silence. Father and son faced each other, angry resentment in their eyes. Then, with a sharp ejaculation, John Denby got to his feet and strode to the window. When he turned a minute later and came back, the angry resentment was gone. His mouth was stern, but his eyes were pleading. He came straight to his son and put both hands on his shoulders.

"Burke, listen to me," he begged. "I'm doing this for two reasons. First, to save you from yourself. You've known this girl scarcely two weeks—hardly an adequate preparation for a lifetime of living together. And just here comes in the second reason. However good and lovely she may be, she couldn't possibly qualify for that long lifetime together, Burke. Simply because she works for her living has nothing to do with it. She has not the tastes or the training that should belong to your wife—that must belong to your wife if she is to make you happy, if she is to take the place of—your mother. And that is the place your wife will take, of course, Burke."

Under the restraining hands on his shoulders the boy stirred restlessly.

"Tastes! Training! What do I care for that? She suits my tastes."

"She wouldn't—for long."

"You wait and see."

"Too great a risk to run, my boy."

"I'll risk it. I'm going to risk it."

Again there was a moment's silence. Again the stern lines deepened around the man's lips. Then very quietly there came the words:—

"Burke, if you marry this girl, you will choose between her and me. It seems to me that I ought not to need to tell you that you cannot bring her here. She shall never occupy your mother's chair as the mistress of this house."

"That settles it, then: I'll take her somewhere else."

If Burke had not been so blind with passion he would have seen and felt the anguish that leaped to his father's eyes. But he did not stop to see or to feel. He snapped out the words, jerked himself free, and left the room.

This did not "settle it," however. There were more words—words common to stern parents and amorous youths and maidens since time immemorial. A father, appalled at the catastrophe that threatened, not only his cherished companionship with his only son, but, in his opinion, the revered sanctity of his wife's memory, wrapped himself in forbidding dignity. An impetuous lover, torn between the old love of years and the new, quite different one of weeks, alternately stormed and pleaded. A young girl, undisciplined, very much in love, and smarting with hurt pride and resentment, blew hot and cold in a manner that tended to drive every one concerned to distraction. As soon as possible a shocked, distressed Sister Eunice packed her trunks and betook herself and her offending household away.

In time, then, a compromise was effected. Burke should leave college immediately and go into the Works with his father, serving a short apprenticeship from the bottom up, as had been planned for him, that he might be the master of the business, in deed as well as in name, when he should some day take his father's place. Meanwhile, for one year, he was not to see or to communicate with Helen Barnet. If at the end of the year, he was still convinced that his only hope of happiness lay in marriage to this girl, all opposition would be withdrawn and he might marry when he pleased—though even then he must not expect to bring his bride to the old home. They must set up an establishment for themselves.

"We should prefer that,—under the circumstances," had been the prompt and somewhat haughty rejoinder, much to the father's discomfiture.

Grieved and dismayed as he was at the airy indifference with which his son appeared to face a fatherless future, John Denby was yet pinning his faith on that year of waiting. Given twelve months with the boy quite to himself, free from the hateful spell of this designing young woman, and there could be no question of the result—in John Denby's mind. In all confidence, therefore, and with every sense alert to make this year as perfect as a year could be, John Denby set himself to the task before him.

It was just here, however, that for John Denby the ghosts walked—ghosts of innumerable toy pistols and frosted cakes. Burke Denby, accustomed all his life to having what he wanted, and having it when he wanted it, moped the first week, sulked the second, covertly rebelled the third, and ran away the last day of the fourth, leaving behind him the customary note, which, in this case, read:—

Dear Dad: I've gone to Helen. I had to. I've lived a year of misery in this last month: so, as far as I am concerned, I have waited my year already. We shall be married at once. I wrote Helen last week, and she consented.

Now, dad, you'll just have to forgive me. I'm twenty-one. I'm a man now, not a boy, and a man has to decide these things for himself. And Helen's a dear. You'll see, when you know her. We'll be back in two weeks. Now don't bristle up. I'm not going to bring her home, of course (at present), after the very cordial invitation you gave me not to! We're going into one of the Reddington apartments. With my allowance and my—er—wages (!) we can manage that all right—until "the stern parent" relents and takes his daughter home—as he should!

Good-bye,
Burke.

John Denby read the letter once, twice; then he pulled the telephone toward him and gave a few crisp orders to James Brett, his general manager. His voice was steady and—to the man at the other end of the wire—ominously emotionless. When he had finished talking five minutes later, certain words had been uttered that would materially change the immediate future of a certain willful youth just then setting out on his honeymoon.

There would be, for Burke Denby, no "Reddington apartment." There would also be no several-other-things; for there would be no "allowance" after the current month. There would be only the "wages," and the things the wages could buy.

There was no disputing the fact that John Denby was very angry. But he was also sorely distressed and grieved. Added to his indignation that his son should have so flouted him was his anguish of heart that the old days of ideal companionship were now gone forever. There was, too, his very real fear for the future happiness of his boy, bound in marriage to a woman he believed would prove to be a most uncongenial mate. But overtopping all, just now, was his wrath at the flippant assurance of his son's note, and the very evident confidence in a final forgiveness that the note showed. It was this that caused the giving of those stern, momentous orders over the telephone—John Denby himself had been somewhat in the habit of having his own way!

The harassed father did not sleep much that night. Until far into the morning hours he sat before the fireless grate in his library, thinking. He looked old, worn, and wholly miserable. In his hand, and often under his gaze, was the miniature of a beautiful woman—his wife.

CHAPTER III

HONEYMOON DAYS

It was on a cool, cloudy day in early September that Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby arrived at Dalton from their wedding trip.

With characteristic inclination to avoid anything unpleasant, the young husband had neglected to tell his wife that they were not to live in the Denby Mansion. He had argued with himself that she would find it out soon enough, anyway, and that there was no reason why he should spoil their wedding trip with disagreeable topics of conversation. Burke always liked to put off disagreeable things till the last.

Helen was aware, it is true, that Burke's father was much displeased at the marriage; but that this displeasure had gone so far as to result in banishment from the home, she did not know. She had been planning, indeed, just how she would win her father-in-law over—just how sweet and lovely and daughterly she would be, as a member of the Denby household; and so sure was she of victory that already she counted the battle half won.

In the old days of her happy girlhood, Helen Barnet had taken as a matter of course the succumbing of everything and everybody to her charm and beauty. And although this feeling had, perforce, been in abeyance for some eighteen months, it had been very rapidly coming back to her during the past two weeks, under the devoted homage of her young husband and the admiring eyes of numberless strangers along their honeymoon way.

It was a complete and disagreeable surprise to her now, therefore, when Burke said to her, a trifle nervously, as they were nearing Dalton:—

"We'll have to go to a hotel, of course, Helen, for a few days, till we get the apartment ready. But 'twon't be for long, dear."

"Hotel! Apartment! Why, Burke, aren't we going home—to your home?"

"Oh, no, dear. We're going to have a home of our own, you know—our home."

"No, I didn't know." Helen's lips showed a decided pout.

"But you'll like it, dear. You just wait and see." The man spoke with determined cheeriness.

"But I can't like it better than your old home, Burke. I know what that is, and I'd much rather go there."

"Yes, yes, but—" Young Denby paused to wet his dry lips. "Er—you know, dear, dad wasn't exactly—er—pleased with the marriage, anyway, and—"

"That's just it," broke in the bride eagerly. "That's one reason I wanted to go there—to show him, you know. Why, Burke, I'd got it all planned out lovely, how nice I was going to be to him—get his paper and slippers, and kiss him good-morning, and—"

"Holy smoke! Kiss—" Just in time the fastidious son of a still more fastidious father pulled himself up; but to a more discerning bride, his face would already have finished his sentence. "Er—but—well, anyhow, dear," he stammered, "that's very kind of you, of course; but you see it's useless even to think of it. He—he has forbidden us to go there."

"Why, the mean old thing!"

"Helen!"

Helen's face showed a frown as well as a pout.

"I don't care. He is mean, if he is your father, not to let—"

"Helen!"

At the angry sharpness of the man's voice Helen stopped abruptly. For a moment she gazed at her husband with reproachful eyes. Then her chin began to quiver, her breath to come in choking little gasps, and the big tears to roll down her face.

"Why, Burke, I—"

"Oh, great Scott! Helen, dearest, don't, please!" begged the dismayed and distracted young husband, promptly capitulating at the awful sight of tears of which he was the despicable cause. "Darling, don't!"

"But you never sp-poke like that to me b-before," choked the wife of a fortnight.

"I know. I was a brute—so I was! But, sweetheart, please stop," he pleaded desperately. "See, we're just pulling into Dalton. You don't want them to see you crying—a bride!"

Mrs. Burke Denby drew in her breath convulsively, and lifted a hurried hand to brush the tears from her eyes. The next moment she smiled, tremulously, but adorably. She looked very lovely as she stepped from the car a little later; and Burke Denby's heart swelled with love and pride as he watched her. If underneath the love and pride there was a vague something not so pleasant, the man told himself it was only a natural regret at having said anything to cast the slightest shadow on the home-coming of this dear girl whom he had asked to share his life. Whatever this vague something was, anyway, Burke resolutely put it behind him, and devoted himself all the more ardently to the comfort of his young wife.

In spite of himself, Burke could not help looking for his father's face at the station. Never before had he come home (when not with his father), and not been welcomed by that father's eager smile and outstretched hand. He missed them both now. Otherwise he was relieved to see few people he knew, as he stepped to the platform, though he fully realized, from the sly winks and covert glances, that every one knew who he was, and who also was the lady at his side.

With only an occasional perfunctory greeting, and no introductions, therefore, the somewhat embarrassed and irritated bridegroom hurried his bride into a public carriage, and gave the order to drive to the Hancock Hotel.

All the way there he talked very fast and very tenderly of the new home that was soon to be theirs.

"'Twill be only for a little—the hotel, dear," he plunged in at once. "And you won't mind it, for a little, while we're planning, will you, darling? I'm going to rent one of the Reddington apartments. You remember them—on Reddington Avenue; white stone with dandy little balconies between the big bay windows. They were just being finished when you were here. They're brand-new, you see. And we'll be so happy, there, dearie,—just us two!"

"Us two! But, Burke, there'll be three. There'll have to be the hired girl, too, you know," fluttered the new wife, in quick panic. "Surely you aren't going to make me do without a hired girl!"

"Oh, no—no, indeed," asserted the man, all the more hurriedly, because he never had thought of a "hired girl," and because he was rather fearfully wondering how much his father paid for the maids, anyway. There would have to be one, of course; but he wondered if his allowance would cover it, with all the rest. Still, he could smoke a cigar or two less a day, he supposed, if it came to a pinch, and—but Helen was speaking.

"Dear, dear, but you did give me a turn, Burke! You see, there'll just have to be a hired girl—that is, if you want anything to eat, sir," she laughed, showing all her dimples. (And Burke loved her dimples!) "I can't cook a little bit. I never did at home, you know, and I should hate it, I'm sure. It's so messy—sticky dough and dishes, and all that!" Again she laughed and showed all her dimples, looking so altogether bewitching that Burke almost—but not quite—stole a kiss. He decided, too, on the spot, that he would rather never smoke another cigar than to subject this adorable little thing at his side to any task that had to do with the hated "messy dough and sticky dishes." Indeed he would!

Something of this must have shown in his face, for the little bride beamed anew, and the remainder of the drive was a blissfully happy duet of fascinating plans regarding this new little nest of a home.

All this was at four o'clock. At eight o'clock Burke Denby came into their room at the hotel with a white face and tense lips.

"Well, Helen, we're in for it," he flung out, dropping himself into the nearest chair.

"What do you mean?"

"Father has cut off my allowance."

"But you—you've gone to work. There's your wages!"

"Oh, yes, there are my—wages."

Something in his tone sent a swift suspicion to her eyes.

"Do you mean—they aren't so big as your allowance?"

"I certainly do."

"How perfectly horrid! Just as if it wasn't mean enough for him not to let us live there, without—"

"Helen!" Burke Denby pulled himself up in his chair. "See here, dear, I shan't let even you say things like that about dad. Now, for heaven's sake, don't let us quarrel about it," he pleaded impatiently, as he saw the dreaded quivering coming to the pouting lips opposite.

"But I—I—"

"Helen, dearest, don't cry, please don't! Crying won't help; and I tell you it's serious business—this is."

"But are you sure—do you know it's true?" faltered the young wife, too thoroughly frightened now to be angry. "Did you see—your father?"

"No; I saw Brett."

"Who's he? Maybe he doesn't know."

"Oh, yes, he does," returned Burke, with grim emphasis. "He knows everything. They say at the Works that he knows what father's going to have for breakfast before the cook does."

"But who is he?"

"He's the head manager of the Denby Iron Works and father's right-hand man. He came here to-night to see me—by dad's orders, I suspect."

"Is your father so awfully angry, then?" Her eyes had grown a bit wistful.

"I'm afraid he is. He says I've made my bed and now I must lie in it. He's cut off my allowance entirely. He's raised my wages—a little, and he says it's up to me now to make good—with my wages."

There was a minute's silence. The man's eyes were gloomily fixed on the opposite wall. His whole attitude spelled disillusion and despair. The woman's eyes, questioning, fearful, were fixed on the man.

Plainly some new, hidden force was at work within Helen Denby's heart. Scorn and anger had left her countenance. Grief and dismay had come in their place.

"Burke, why has your father objected so to—to me?" she asked at last, timidly.

Abstractedly, as if scarcely conscious of what he was saying, the man shrugged:—

"Oh, the usual thing. He said you weren't suited to me; you wouldn't make me happy."

The wife recoiled visibly. She gave a piteous little cry. It was too low, apparently, to reach her husband's ears. At all events, he did not turn. For fully half a minute she watched him, and in her shrinking eyes was mirrored each eloquent detail of his appearance, the lassitude, the gloom, the hopelessness. Then, suddenly, to her whole self there came an electric change. As if throwing off bonds that held her she flung out her arms and sprang toward him.

"Burke, it isn't true, it isn't true," she flamed. "I'm going to make you happy! You just wait and see. And we'll show him. We'll show him we can do it! He told you to make good; and you must, Burke! I won't have him and everybody else saying I dragged you down. I won't! I won't! I won't!"

Burke Denby's first response was to wince involuntarily at the shrill crescendo of his wife's voice. His next was to shrug his shoulders irritably as the meaning of her words came to him.

"Nonsense, Helen, don't be a goose!" he scowled.

"I'm not a goose. I'm your wife," choked Helen, still swayed by the exaltation that had mastered her. "And I'm going to help you win—win, I say! Do you hear me, Burke?"

"Of course I hear you, Helen; and—so'll everybody else, if you don't look out. Please speak lower, Helen!"

She was too intent and absorbed to be hurt or vexed. Obediently she dropped her voice almost to a whisper.

"Yes, yes, I know, Burke; and I will, I will, dear." She fell on her knees at his side. "But it seems as if I must shout it to the world. I want to go out on the street here and scream it at the top of my voice, till your father in his great big useless house on the hill just has to hear me."

"Helen, Helen!" shivered her husband.

But she hurried on feverishly.

"Burke, listen! You're going to make good. Do you hear? We'll show them. We'll never let them say they—beat us!"

"But—but—"

"We aren't going to say 'but' and hang back. We're going to do!"

"But, Helen, how? What?" demanded the man, stirred into a show of interest at last. "How can we?"

"I don't know, but we're going to do it."

"There won't be—hardly any money."

"I'll get along—somehow."

"And we'll have to live in a cheap little hole somewhere—we can't have one of the Reddingtons."

"I don't want it—now."

"And you'll have to—to work."

"Yes, I know." Her chin was still bravely lifted.

"There can't be any—maid now."

"Then you'll have to eat—what I cook!" She drew in her breath with a hysterical little laugh that was half a sob.

"You darling! I shall love it!" He caught her to himself in a revulsion of feeling that was as ardent as it was sudden. "Only I'll so hate to have you do it, sweetheart—it's so messy and doughy!"

"Nonsense!"

"You told me it was."

"But I didn't know then—what they were saying about me. Burke, they just shan't say I'm dragging you down."

"Indeed they shan't, darling."

"Then you will make good?" she regarded him with tearful, luminous eyes.

"Of course I will—with you to help me."

Her face flamed into radiant joy.

"Yes, with me to help! That's it, that's it—I'm going to help you," she breathed fervently, flinging her arms about his neck.

And to each, from the dear stronghold of the other's arms, at the moment, the world looked, indeed, to be a puny thing, scarcely worth the conquering.

CHAPTER IV

NEST-BUILDING

It is so much easier to say than to do. But nothing in the experience of either Burke Denby or of Helen, his wife, had demonstrated this fact for them. Quite unprepared, therefore, and with confident courage, they proceeded to pass from the saying to the doing.

True, in the uncompromising sunlight of the next morning, the world did look a bit larger, a shade less easily conquerable; and a distinctly unpleasant feeling of helplessness assailed both husband and wife. Yet with a gay "Now we'll go house-hunting right away so as to save paying here!" from Helen, and an adoring "You darling—but it's a burning shame!" from Burke, the two sallied forth, after the late hotel breakfast.

The matter of selecting the new home was not a difficult one—at first. They decided at once that, if they could not have an apartment in the Reddington Chambers, they would prefer a house. "For," Burke said, "as for being packed away like sardines in one of those abominable little cheap flat-houses, I won't!" So a house they looked for at the start. And very soon they found what Helen said was a "love of a place"—a pretty little cottage with a tiny lawn and a flower-bed.

"And it's so lucky it's for rent," she exulted. "For it's just what we want, isn't it, dearie?"

"Y-yes; but—"

"Why, Burke, don't you like it? I think it's a dear! Of course it isn't like your father's house. But we can't expect that."

"Expect that! Great Scott, Helen,—we can't expect this!" cried the man.

"Why, Burke, what do you mean?"

"It'll cost too much, dear,—in this neighborhood. We can't afford it."

"Oh, that'll be all right. I'll economize somewhere else. Come; it says the key is next door."

"Yes, but, Helen, dearest, I know we can't—" But "Helen, dearest," was already halfway up the adjoining walk; and Burke, with a despairing glance at her radiant, eager face, followed her. There was, indeed, no other course open to him, as he knew, unless he chose to make a scene on the public thorough-fare—and Burke Denby did not like scenes.

The house was found to be as attractive inside as it was out; and Helen's progress from room to room was a series of delighted exclamations. She was just turning to go upstairs when her husband's third desperate expostulation brought her feet and her tongue to a pause.

"Helen, darling, I tell you we can't!" he was exclaiming. "It's out of the question."

"Burke!" Her lips began to quiver. "And when you know how much I want it!"

"Sweetheart, don't, please, make it any harder for me," he begged. "I'd give you a dozen houses like this if I could—and you know it. But we can't afford even this one. The rent is forty dollars. I heard her tell you when she gave you the key."

"Never mind. We can economize other ways."

"But, Helen, I only get sixty all told. We can't pay forty for rent."

"Oh, but, Burke, that leaves twenty, and we can do a lot on twenty. Just as if what we ate would cost us that! I don't care for meat, anyhow, much. We'll cut that out. And I hate grapefruit and olives. They cost a lot. Mrs. Allen was always having them, and—"

The distraught husband interrupted with an impatient gesture.

"Grapefruit and olives, indeed! And as if food were all of it! Where are our clothes and coal and—and doctor's bills, and I don't-know-what-all coming from? Why, great Scott, Helen, I smoke half that in a week, sometimes,—not that I shall now, of course," he added hastily. "But, honestly, dearie, we simply can't do it. Now, come, be a good girl, and let's go on. We're simply wasting time here."

Helen, convinced at last, tossed him the key, with a teary "All right—take it back then. I shan't! I know I should c-cry right before her!" The next minute, at sight of the abject woe and dismay on her husband's face, she flung herself upon him with a burst of sobs.

"There, there, Burke, here I am, so soon, making a fuss because we can't afford things! But I won't any more—truly I won't! I was a mean, horrid old thing! Yes, I was," she reiterated in answer to his indignant denial. "Come, let's go quick!" she exclaimed, pulling herself away, and lifting her head superbly. "I don't want the old place, anyhow. Truly, I don't!" And, with a dazzling smile, she reached out her hand and tripped enticingly ahead of him toward the door; while the man, bewildered, but enthralled by this extraordinary leap from fretful stubbornness to gay docility, hurried after her with an incoherent jumble of rapturous adjectives.

Such was Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby's first experience of home-hunting. The second, though different in detail, was similar in disappointment. So also were the third and the fourth experiences. Not, indeed, until the weary, distracted pair had spent three days in time, all their patience, and most of their good nature, did they finally arrive at a decision. And then their selection, alas, proved to be one of the despised tiny flats, in which, according to the unhappy young bridegroom, they were destined to be packed like sardines.

After all, it had been the "elegant mirror in the parlor," and the "just grand" tiled and tessellated entrance, that had been the determining factors in the decision; for Burke, thankful that at last something within reach of his pocketbook had been found to bring a sparkle to his beloved's eyes, had stifled his own horror at the tawdry cheapness of it all, and had given a consent that was not without a measure of relief born of the three long days of weary, well-nigh hopeless search.

Dalton, like most manufacturing towns of fifteen or twenty thousand souls, had all the diversity of a much larger place. There was West Hill, where were the pillared and porticoed residences of the pretentious and the pretending, set in painfully new, wide-sweeping, flower-bordered lawns; and there was Valley Street, a double line of ramshackle wooden buildings with broken steps and shutterless windows, where a blade of grass was a stranger and a flower unknown, save for perhaps a sickly geranium on a tenement window sill. There was Old Dalton, with its winding, tree-shaded streets clambering all over the slope of Elm Hill, where old colonial mansions, with an air of aloofness (borrowed quite possibly from their occupants), seemed ever to be withdrawing farther and farther away from plebeian noise and publicity. There was, of course, the mill district, where were the smoke-belching chimneys and great black buildings that meant the town's bread and butter; and there were the adjoining streets of workmen's houses, fitted to give a sensitive soul the horrors, so seemingly endless was the repetition of covered stoop and dormer window, always exactly the same, as far as eye could reach. There was, too, the bustling, asphalted, brick-blocked business center; and there were numerous streets of simple, pretty cottages, and substantial residences, among which, with growing frequency, there were beginning to appear the tall, many-windowed apartment houses, ranging all the way from the exclusive, expensive Reddington Chambers down to the flimsy structures like the one whose tawdry ornamentation had caught the fancy of Burke Denby's village-bred wife.

To Burke Denby himself, late of Denby House (perhaps the most aloof of all the "old colonials"), the place was a nightmare of horror. But because his wife's eyes had glistened, and because his wife's lips had caroled a joyous "Oh, Burke, I'd love this place, darling!"—and because, most important of all, if it must be confessed, the rent was only twenty dollars a month, he had uttered a grim "All right, we'll take it." And the selection of the home was accomplished.

Not until they were on the way to the hotel that night did there come to the young husband the full realizing sense that housekeeping meant furniture.

"Oh, of course I knew it did," he groaned, half-laughingly, after his first despairing ejaculation. "But I just didn't think; that's all. Our furniture at home we'd always had. But of course it does have to be bought—at first."

"Of course! And I didn't think, either," laughed Helen. "You see, we'd always had our furniture, too, I guess. But then, it'll be grand to buy it. I love new things!"

Burke Denby frowned.

"Buy it! That's all right—if we had the money to pay. Heaven only knows how much it'll cost. I don't."

"But, Burke, you've got some money, haven't you? You took a big roll out of your pocket last night."

He gave her a scornful glance.

"Big roll, indeed! How far do you suppose that would go toward furnishing a home? Of course I've got some money—a little left from my allowance—but that doesn't mean I've got enough to furnish a home."

"Then let's give up housekeeping and board," proposed Helen. "Then we won't have to buy any furniture. And I think I'd like it better anyhow; and I know you would—after you'd sampled my cooking," she finished laughingly.

But her husband did not smile. The frown only deepened as he ejaculated:—

"Board! Not much, Helen! We couldn't board at a decent place. 'Twould cost too much. And as for the cheap variety—great Scott, Helen! I wonder if you think I'd stand for that! Heaven knows we'll be enough gossiped about, as it is, without our planting ourselves right under the noses of half the tabby-cats in town for them to 'oh' and 'ah' and 'um' every time we turn around or don't turn around! No, ma'am, Helen! We'll shut ourselves up somewhere within four walls we can call home, even if we have to furnish it with only two chairs and a bed and a kitchen stove. It'll be ours—and we'll be where we won't be stared at."

Helen laughed lightly.

"Dear, dear, Burke, how you do run on! Just as if one minded a little staring! I rather like it, myself,—if I know my clothes and my back hair are all right."

"Ugh! Helen!"

"Well, I do," she laughed, uptilting her chin. "It makes one feel so sort of—er—important. But I won't say 'board' again, never,—unless you begin to scold at my cooking," she finished with an arch glance.

"As if I could do that!" cried the man promptly, again the adoring husband. "I shall love everything you do—just because it's you that do it. The only trouble will be, you won't get enough to eat—because I shall want to eat it all!"

"You darling! Aren't you the best ever!" she cooed, giving his arm a surreptitious squeeze. "But, really, you know, I am going to be a bang-up cook. I've got a cookbook."

"So soon? Where did you get that?"

"Yesterday, while you went into Stoddard's for that house-key. I saw one in the window next door and I went in and bought it. 'Twas two dollars, so it ought to be a good one. And that makes me think. It took all the money I had, 'most, in my purse. So I—I'm afraid I'll have to have some more, dear."

"Why, of course, of course! You mustn't go without money a minute." And the young husband, with all the alacrity of a naturally generous nature supplemented by the embarrassment of this new experience of being asked for money by the girl he loved, plunged his hand into his pocket and crowded two bills into her unresisting fingers. "There! And I won't be so careless again, dear. I don't ever mean you to have to ask for money, sweetheart."

"Oh, thank you," she murmured, tucking the bills into her little handbag. "I shan't need any more for ever so long, I'm sure. I'm going to be economical now, you know."

"Of course you are. You're going to be a little brick. I know."

"And we won't mind anything if we're only together," she breathed.

"There won't be anything to mind," he answered fervently, with an ardent glance that would have been a kiss had it not been for the annoying presence of a few score of Dalton's other inhabitants on the street together with themselves.

The next minute they reached the hotel.

At nine o'clock the following morning Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby sallied forth to buy the furniture for their "tenement," as Helen called it, until her husband's annoyed remonstrances changed the word to "apartment."

Burke Denby learned many things during the next few hours. He learned first that tables and chairs and beds and stoves—really decent ones that a fellow could endure the sight of—cost a prodigious amount of money. But, to offset this, and to make life really worth the living, after all, it seemed that one might buy a quantity sufficient for one's needs, and pay for them in installments, week by week. This idea, while not wholly satisfactory, seemed the only way of stretching their limited means to cover their many needs; and, after some hesitation, it was adopted.

There remained then only the matter of selection; and it was just here that Burke Denby learned something else. He learned that two people, otherwise apparently in perfect accord, could disagree most violently over the shape of a chair or the shade of a rug. Indeed, he would not have believed it possible that such elements of soul torture could lie in a mere matter of color or texture. And how any one with eyes and sensibilities could wish to select for one's daily companions such a mass of gingerbread decoration and glaring colors as seemed to meet the fancy of his wife, he could not understand. Neither could he understand why all his selections and preferences were promptly dubbed "dingy" and "homely," nor why nothing that he liked pleased her at all. As such was certainly the case, however, he came to express these preferences less and less frequently. And in the end he always bought what she wanted, particularly as the price on her choice was nearly always lower than the one on his—which was an argument in its favor that he found it hard to refute.

Tractable as he was as to quality, however, he did have to draw a sharp line as to quantity; for Helen;—with the cheerful slogan, "Why, it's only twenty-five cents a week more, Burke!"—seemed not to realize that there was a limit even to the number of those one might spend—on sixty dollars a month. True, at the beginning she did remind him that they could "eat less" till they "got the things paid for," and that her clothes were "all new, anyhow, being a bride, so!" But she had not said that again. Perhaps because she saw the salesman turn his back to laugh, and perhaps because she was a little frightened at the look on her husband's face. At all events, when Burke did at last insist that they had bought quite enough, she acquiesced with some measure of grace.

Burke himself, when the shopping was finished, drew a sigh of relief, yet with an inward shudder at the recollection of certain things marked "Sold to Burke Denby."

"Oh, well," he comforted himself. "Helen's happy—and that's the main thing; and I shan't see them much. I'm away days and asleep nights." Nor did it occur to him that this was not the usual attitude of a supposedly proud bridegroom toward his new little nest of a home.

Getting settled in the little Dale Street apartment was, so far as Burke was concerned, a mere matter of moving from the hotel and dumping the contents of his trunk into his new chiffonier and closet. True, Helen, looking tired and flurried (and not nearly so pretty as usual), brought to him some borrowed tools, together with innumerable curtains and rods and nails and hooks that simply must be put up, she said, before she could do a thing. But Burke, after a half-hearted trial,—during which he mashed his thumb and bored three holes in wrong places,—flew into a passion of irritability, and bade her get the janitor who "owned the darn things" to do the job, and to pay him what he asked—'twould be worth it, no matter what it was!

With a very hasty kiss then Burke banged out of the house and headed for the Denby Iron Works.

It was not alone the curtains or the offending hammer that was wrong with Burke Denby that morning. The time had come when he must not only meet his fellow employees, and take his place among them, but he must face his father. And he was dreading yet longing to see his father. He had not seen him since he bade him good-night and went upstairs to his own room the month before—to write that farewell note.

Once, since coming back from his wedding trip, he had been tempted to leave town and never see his father again—until he should have made for himself the name and the money that he was going to make. Then he would come back and cry: "Behold, this is I, your son, and this is Helen, my wife, who, you see, has not dragged me down!" He would not, of course, talk like that. But he would show them. He would! This had been when he first learned from Brett of the allowance-cutting, and of his father's implacable anger.

Then had come the better, braver decision. He would stay where he was. He would make the name and the money right here, under his father's very eyes. It would be harder, of course; but there would then be all the more glory in the winning. Besides, to leave now would look like defeat—would make one seem almost like a quitter. And his father hated quitters! He would like to show his father. He would show his father. And he would show him right here. And had not Helen, his dear wife, said that she would aid him? As if he could help winning out under those circumstances!

It was with thoughts such as these that he went now to meet his father. Especially was he thinking of Helen, dear Helen,—poor Helen, struggling back there with those abominable hooks and curtains. And he had been such a brute to snap her up so crossly! He would not do it again. It was only that he was so dreading this first meeting with his father. After that it would be easier. There would not be anything then only just to keep steadily going till he'd made good—he and Helen. But now—father would be proud to see how finely he was taking it!

With chin up and shoulders back, therefore, Burke Denby walked into his father's office.

"Well, father," he began, with cheery briskness. Then, instantly, voice and manner changed as he took a hurried step forward. "Dad, what is it? Are you ill?"

So absorbed had Burke Denby been over the part he himself was playing in this little drama of Denby and Son, that he had given no thought as to the probable looks or actions of any other member of the cast. He was quite unprepared, therefore, for the change in the man he now saw before him—the pallor, the shrunken cheeks, the stooped shoulders, the unmistakable something that made the usually erect, debonair man look suddenly worn and old.

"Dad, you are ill!" exclaimed Burke in dismay.

John Denby got to his feet at once. He even smiled and held out his hand. Yet Burke, who took the hand, felt suddenly that there were uncounted miles of space between them.

"Ah, Burke, how are you? No, I'm not ill at all. And you—are you well?"

"Er—ah—oh, yes, very well—er—very well."

"That's good. I'm glad."

There was a brief pause. A torrent of words swept to the tip of the younger man's tongue; but nothing found voice except another faltering "Er—yes, very well!" which Burke had not meant to say at all. There was a second brief pause, then John Denby sat down.

"You will find Brett in his office. You have come to work, I dare say," he observed, as he turned to the letters on his desk.

"Er—yes," stammered the young man. The next moment he found himself alone, white and shaken, the other side of his father's door.

To work? Oh, yes, he had come to work; but he had come first to talk. There were a whole lot of things he had meant to say to his father. First, of course, there would have had to be something in the nature of an apology or the like to patch up the quarrel. Then he would tell him how he was really going to make good—he and Helen. After that they could get down to one of their old-time chats. They always had been chums—he and dad; and they hadn't had a talk for four weeks. Why, for three weeks he had been saving up a story, a dandy story that dad would appreciate! And there were other things, serious things, that—

And here already he had seen his father, and it was over. And he had not said a word—nothing of what he had meant to say. He believed he would go back—

With an angry gesture Burke Denby turned and extended his hand halfway toward the closed door. Then, with an impatient shrug, he whirled about and strode toward the door marked "J. A. Brett, General Manager."

If young Denby had obeyed his first impulse and reëntered his father's office he would have found the man with his head bowed on the desk, his arms outflung.

John Denby, too, was white and shaken. He, too, had been dreading this meeting, and longing for it—that it might be over. There was now, however, on his part, no feeling of chagrin and impotence because of things that had not been said. There was only a shuddering relief that things had not been said; that he had been able to carry it straight through as he had planned; that he had not shown his boy how much he—cared. He was glad that his pride had been equal to the strain; that he had not weakly succumbed at the first glimpse of his son's face, the first touch of his son's hand, as he had so feared that he would do.

And he had not succumbed—though he had almost gone down before the quick terror and affectionate dismay that had leaped into his son's voice and eyes at sight of his own changed appearance. (Why could not he keep those abominable portions of his anatomy from being so wretchedly telltale?) But he had remembered in time. Did the boy think, then, that a mere word of sympathy now could balance the scale against so base a disregard of everything loyal and filial a month ago? Then he would show that it could not.

And he had shown it.

What if he did know now, even better than he had known it all these last miserable four weeks, that his whole world had lain in his boy's hand, that his whole life had been bounded by his boy's smile, his whole soul immersed in his boy's future? What if he did know that all the power and wealth and fame of name that he had won were as the dust in his fingers—if he might not pass them on to his son? He was not going to let Burke know this. Indeed, no!

Burke had made his own bed. He should lie in it. Deliberately he had chosen to cast aside the love and companionship of a devoted father at the beck of an almost unknown girl's hand. Should the father then offer again the once-scorned love and companionship? Had he no pride—no proper sense of simple right and justice? No self-respect, even?

It was thus, and by arguments such as these, that John Denby had lashed himself into the state of apparently cool, courteous indifference that had finally carried him successfully through the interview just closed.

For a long time John Denby sat motionless, his arms outflung across the letters that might have meant so much, but that did mean so little, to him—now. Then slowly he raised his head and fixed somber, longing eyes on the door that had so recently closed behind his son.

The boy was in there with Brett now—his boy. He was being told that his wages for the present were to be fifteen dollars a week, and that he was expected to live within his income—that the wages were really very liberal, considering his probable value to the company at the first. He would begin at the bottom, as had been planned years ago; but with this difference: he would be promoted now only when he had earned it. He would have been pushed rapidly ahead to the top, had matters been as they once were. Now he must demonstrate and prove his ability.

All this Brett was telling Burke now. Poor Burke! Brett was so harsh, so uncompromising. As if it weren't tough enough to have to live on a paltry fifteen dollars a week, without—

John Denby sighed and rose to his feet. Aimlessly he fidgeted about the spacious, well-appointed office. Twice he turned toward the door as if to leave the room. Once he reached a hesitating hand toward the push-button on this desk. Then determinedly he sat down and picked up one of his letters.

Brett was right. It was the best way; the only way. And it was well, indeed, that Brett had been delegated to do the telling. If it had been himself now—! Shucks! If it had been himself, the boy would only have had to look his reproach—and his wages would have been doubled on the spot! Fifteen dollars a week—Burke! Why, the boy could not— Well, then, he need not have been so foolish, so headstrong, so heartlessly disregardful of his father's wishes. He had brought it upon himself, entirely, entirely!

Whereupon, with an angry exclamation, John Denby shifted about in his hand the letter which for three minutes he had been holding before his eyes upside down.

CHAPTER V

THE WIFE

Helen Denby had never doubted her ability to be a perfect wife. As a girl, her vision had pictured a beauteous creature moving through a glorified world of love and admiration, ease and affluence.

Later, at the time of her marriage to Burke Denby, her vision had altered sufficiently to present a picture of herself as the sweet good-angel of the old Denby Mansion, the forgiving young wife who lays up no malice against an unappreciative father-in-law. Even when, still later (upon their return from their wedding trip and upon her learning of John Denby's decree of banishment), the vision was necessarily warped and twisted all out of semblance to its original outlines, there yet remained unchanged the basic idea of perfect wifehood.

Helen saw herself now as the martyr wife whose superb courage and self-sacrifice were to be the stepping-stones of a husband's magnificent success. She would be guide, counselor, and friend. (Somewhere she had seen those words. She liked them very much.) Unswervingly she would hold Burke to his high purpose. Untiringly she would lead him ever toward his goal of "making good."

She saw herself the sweet, loving wife, graciously presiding over the well-kept home, always ready, daintily gowned, to welcome his coming with a kiss, and to speed his going with a blessing. Then, when in due course he had won out, great would be her reward. With what sweet pride and gentle dignity would she accept the laurel wreath of praise (Helen had seen this expression somewhere, too, and liked it), which a remorseful but grateful world would hasten to lay at the feet of her who alone had made possible the splendid victory—the once despised, flouted wife—the wife who was to drag him down!

It was a pleasant picture, and Helen frequently dwelt upon it—especially the sweet-and-gentle-dignity-wife part. She found it particularly soothing during those first early days of housekeeping in the new apartment.

Not that she was beginning in the least to doubt her ability to be that perfect wife. It was only that to think of things as they would be was a pleasant distraction from thinking of things as they were. But of course it would be all right very soon, anyway,—just as soon as everything got nicely to running.

Helen did wonder sometimes why the getting of "everything nicely to running" was so difficult. That a certain amount of training and experience was necessary to bring about the best results never occurred to her. If Helen had been asked to take a position as stenographer or church soloist, she would have replied at once that she did not know how to do the work. Into the position of home-maker, however, she stepped with cheerful confidence, her eyes only on the wonderful success she was going to make.

To Helen housekeeping was something like a clock that you wound up in the morning to run all day. And even when at the end of a week she could not help seeing that not once yet had she got around to being the "sweet, daintily gowned wife welcoming her husband to a well-kept home," before that husband appeared at the door, she still did not doubt her own capabilities. It was only that "things hadn't got to running yet." And it was always somebody else's fault, anyway,—frequently her husband's. For if he did not come to dinner too early, before a thing was done, he was sure to be late, and thus spoil everything by her trying to keep things hot for him. And, of course, under such circumstances, nobody could expect one to be a sweet and daintily gowned wife!

Besides, there was the cookbook.

"Do you know, Burke," she finally wailed one night, between sobs, "I don't believe it's good for a thing—that old cookbook! I haven't got a thing out of it yet that's been real good. I've half a mind to take it back where I got it, and make them change it, or else give me back my money. I have, so there!"

"But, dearie," began her husband doubtfully, "you said yourself yesterday that you forgot the salt in the omelet, and the baking powder in the cake, and—"

"Well, what if I did?" she contended aggrievedly. "What's a little salt or baking powder? 'Twasn't but a pinch or a spoonful, anyhow, and I remembered all the other things. Besides, if those rules were any good they'd be worded so I couldn't forget part of the things. And, anyhow, I don't think it's very nice of you to b-blame me all the time when I'm doing the very best I can. I told you I couldn't cook, but you said you'd like anything I made, because I did it, and—"

"Yes, yes, darling, and so I do," interrupted the remorseful husband, hurriedly. And, to prove it, he ate the last scrap of the unappetizing concoction on his plate, which his wife said was a fish croquette. Afterwards still further to show his remorse, he helped her wash the dishes and set the rooms in order. Then together they went for a walk in the moonlight.

It was a beautiful walk, and it quite restored Helen to good nature. They went up on West Hill (where Helen particularly loved to go), and they laid wonderful plans of how one day they, too, would build a big stone palace of a home up there—though Burke did say that, for his part, he liked Elm Hill quite as well; but Helen laughed him out of that "old-fashioned idea." At least he said no more about it.

They talked much of how proud Burke's father was going to be when Burke had made good, and of how ashamed and sorry he would be that he had so misjudged his son's wife. And Helen uttered some very sweet and beautiful sentiments concerning her intention of laying up no malice, her firm determination to be loving and forgiving.

Then together they walked home in the moonlight; and so thrilled and exalted were they that even the cheap little Dale Street living-room looked wonderfully dear. And Helen said that, after all, love was the only thing that mattered—that they just loved each other. And Burke said, "Yes, yes, indeed."

The vision of the sweet, daintily gowned wife and the perfect home was very clear to Helen as she dropped off to sleep that night; and she was sure that she could begin to realize it at once. But unfortunately she overslept the next morning—which was really Burke's fault, as she said, for he forgot to wind the alarm clock, and she was not used to getting up at such an unearthly hour, anyway, and she did not see why he had to do it, for that matter—he was really the son of the owner, even if he was called an apprentice.

This did not help matters any, for Burke never liked any reference to his position at the Works. To be sure, he did not say much, this time, except to observe stiffly that he would like his breakfast, if she would be so good as to get it—as if she were not already hurrying as fast as she could, and herself only half-dressed at that!

Of course the breakfast was a failure. Helen said that perhaps some people could get a meal of victuals on to the table, with a hungry man eyeing their every move, but she could not. Burke declared then that he really did not want any breakfast anyway, and he started to go; but as Helen only cried the more at this, he had to come back and comfort her—thereby, in the end, being both breakfastless and late to his work.

Helen, after he had gone, spent a blissfully wretched ten minutes weeping over the sad fate that should doom such a child of light and laughter as herself to the somber rôle of martyr wife, and wondered if, after all, it would not be really more impressive and more soul-torturing-with-remorse for the cruel father-in-law, if she should take poison, or gas, or something (not disfiguring), and lay herself calmly down to die, her beautiful hands crossed meekly upon her bosom.

Attractive as was this picture in some respects, it yet had its drawbacks. Then, too, there was the laurel wreath of praise due her later. She had almost forgotten that. On the whole, that would be preferable to the poison, Helen decided, as she began, with really cheerful alacrity, to attack the messy breakfast dishes.

It was not alone the cooking that troubled the young wife during that first month of housekeeping. Everywhere she found pitfalls for her unwary feet, from managing the kitchen range to keeping the living-room dusted.

And there was the money.

Helen's idea of money, in her happy, care-free girlhood, had been that it was one of the common necessities of life; and she accepted it as she did the sunshine—something she was entitled to; something everybody had. She learned the fallacy of this, of course, when she attempted to earn her own living; but in marrying the son of the rich John Denby, she had expected to step back into the sunshine, as it were. It was not easy now to adjust herself to the change.

She did not like the idea of asking for every penny she spent, and it seemed as if she was always having to ask Burke for money; and, though he invariably handed it over with a nervously quick, "Why, yes, certainly! I don't mean you to have to ask for it, Helen"; yet she thought she detected a growing irritation in his manner each time. And on the last occasion he had added a dismayed "But I hadn't any idea you could have got out so soon as this again!" And it made her feel very uncomfortable indeed.

As if she were to blame that it took so much butter and coffee and sugar and stuff just to get three meals a day! And as if it were her fault that that horrid cookbook was always calling for something she did not have, like mace, or summer savory, or thyme, and she had to run out and buy a pound of it! Didn't he suppose it took some money to stock up with things, when one hadn't a thing to begin with?

Helen had been on the point of saying something of this sort to her husband, simply as a matter of self-justification, when there unexpectedly came a most delightful solution of her difficulty.

It was the grocer who pointed the way.

"Why don't you open an account with us, Mrs. Denby?" he asked smilingly one day, in reply to her usual excuse that she could not buy something because she did not have the money to pay for it.

"An account? What's that? That wouldn't make me have any more money, would it? Father was always talking about accounts—good ones and bad ones. He kept a store, you know. But I never knew what they were, exactly. I never thought of asking. I never had to pay any attention to money at home. What is an account? How can I get one?"

"Why, you give your orders as usual, but let the payment go until the end of the month," smiled the grocer. "We'll charge it—note it down, you know—then send the bill to your husband."

"And I won't have to ask him for any money?"

"Not to pay us." The man's lips twitched a little.

"Oh, that would be just grand," she sighed longingly. "I'd like that. And it's something the way we're buying our furniture, isn't it?—installments, you know."

The grocer's lips twitched again.

"Er—y-yes, only we send a bill for the entire month."

"And he pays it? Oh, I see. That's just grand! And he'd like it all right, wouldn't he?—because of course he'd have to pay some time, anyhow. And this way he wouldn't have to have me bothering him so much all the time asking for money. Oh, thank you. You're very kind. I think I will do that way if you don't mind."

"We shall be glad to have you, Mrs. Denby. So we'll call that settled. And now you can begin right away this morning."

"And can I get those canned peaches and pears and plums, and the grape jelly that I first looked at?"

"Certainly—if you decide you want 'em," mumbled the grocer, throwing the last six words as a sop to his conscience which was beginning to stir unpleasantly.

"Oh, yes, I want 'em," averred Helen, her eager eyes sweeping the alluringly laden shelves before her. "I wanted them all the time, you know, only I didn't have enough money to pay for them. Now it'll be all right because Burke'll pay—I mean, Mr. Denby," she corrected with a conscious blush, suddenly remembering what her husband had said the night before about her calling him "Burke" so much to strangers.

Helen found she wanted not only the fruits and jelly, but several other cans of soups, meats, and vegetables. And it was such a comfort, for once, to select what she wanted, and not have to count up the money in her purse! She was radiantly happy when she went home from market that morning (instead of being tired and worried as was usually the case); and the glow on her face lasted all through the day and into the evening—so much so that even Burke must have noticed it, for he told her he did not know when he had seen her looking so pretty. And he gave her an extra kiss or two when he greeted her.

The second month of housekeeping proved to be a great improvement over the first. It was early in that month that Helen learned the joy and comfort of having "an account" at her grocer's. And she soon discovered that not yet had she probed this delight to its depths, for not only the grocer, but the fishman and the butcher were equally kind, and allowed her to open accounts with them. Coincident with this came the discovery that there were such institutions as bakeries and delicatessen shops, which seemed to have been designed especially to meet the needs of just such harassed little martyr housewives as she herself was; for in them one might buy bread and cakes and pies and even salads and cold meats, and fish balls. One might, indeed, with these delectable organizations at hand, snap one's fingers at all the cookbooks in the world—cookbooks that so miserably failed to cook!

The baker and the little Dutch delicatessen man, too (when they found out who she was), expressed themselves as delighted to open an account; and with the disagreeable necessity eliminated of paying on the spot for what one ordered, and with so great an assortment of ready-to-eat foods to select from, Helen found her meal-getting that second month a much simpler matter.

Then, too, Helen was much happier now that she did not have to ask her husband for money. She accepted what he gave her, and thanked him; but she said nothing about her new method of finance.

"I'm going to keep it secret till the stores send him the bills," said Helen to herself. "Then I'll show him what a lot I've saved from what he has given me, and he'll be so glad to pay things all at once without being bothered with my everlasting teasing!"

She only smiled, therefore, enigmatically, when he said one day, as he passed over the money:—

"Jove, girl! I quite forgot. You must be getting low. But I'm glad you didn't have to ask me for it, anyhow!"

Ask him for it, indeed! How pleased he would be when he found out that she was never going to ask him for money again!

Helen was meaning to be very economical these days. When she went to market she always saw several things she would have liked, that she did not get, for of course she wanted to make the bills as small as she could. Naturally Burke would wish her to do that. She tried to save, too, a good deal of the money Burke gave her; but that was not always possible, for there were her own personal expenses. True, she did not need many clothes—but she was able to pick up a few bargains in bows and collars (one always needed fresh neckwear, of course); and she found some lovely silk stockings, too, that were very cheap, so she bought several pairs—to save money. And of course there were always car-fares and a soda now and then, or a little candy.

There were the "movies" too. She had fallen into the way of going rather frequently to the Empire with her neighbor on the same floor. It did her good, and got her out of herself. (She had read only recently how every wife should have some recreation; it was a duty she owed herself and her husband—to keep herself youthful and attractive.) She got lonesome and nervous, sitting at home all day; and now that she had systematized her housekeeping so beautifully by buying almost everything all cooked, she had plenty of leisure. Of course she would have preferred to go to the Olympia Theater. They had a stock company there, and real plays. But their cheapest seats were twenty-five cents, while she might go to the Empire for ten. So very bravely she put aside her expensive longings, and chose the better part—economy and the movies. Besides, Mrs. Jones, the neighbor on the same floor, said that, for her part, she liked the movies the best,—you got "such a powerful lot more for your dough."

Mrs. Jones always had something bright and original like that to say—Helen liked her very much! Indeed, she told Burke one day that Mrs. Jones was almost as good as a movie show herself. Burke, however, did not seem to care for Mrs. Jones. For that matter, he did not care for the movies, either.

No matter where Helen went in the afternoon, she was always very careful to be at home before Burke. She hoped she knew what pertained to being a perfect wife better than to be careless about matters like that! Mrs. Jones was not always so particular in regard to her husband—which only served to give Helen a pleasant, warm little feeling of superiority at the difference.

Perhaps Mrs. Jones detected the superiority, for sometimes she laughed, and said:—

"All right, we'll go if you must; but you'll soon get over it. This lovey-dovey-I'm-right-here-hubby business is all very well for a while, but—you wait!"

"All right, I'm waiting. But—you see!" Helen always laughed back, bridling prettily.

Hurrying home from shopping or the theater, therefore, Helen always stopped and got her potato salad and cold meat, or whatever else she needed. And the meal was invariably on the table before Burke's key sounded in the lock.

Helen was, indeed, feeling quite as if she were beginning to realize her vision now. Was she not each night the loving, daintily gowned wife welcoming her husband to a well-ordered, attractive home? There was even quite frequently a bouquet of flowers on the dinner table. Somewhere she had read that flowers always added much to a meal; and since then she had bought them when she felt that she could afford them. And in the market there were almost always some cheap ones, only a little faded. Of course, she never bought the fresh, expensive ones.

After dinner there was the long evening together. Sometimes they went to walk, after the dishes were done—Burke had learned to dry dishes beautifully. More often they stayed at home and played games, or read—Burke was always wanting to read. Sometimes they just talked, laying wonderful plans about the fine new house they were going to build. Now that Helen did not have to ask Burke for money, there did not seem to be so many occasions when he was fretful and nervous; and they were much happier together.

All things considered, therefore, Helen felt, indeed, before this second month of housekeeping was over, that she had now "got things nicely to running."

CHAPTER VI

THE HUSBAND

Burke Denby had never given any thought as to whether he were going to be a perfect husband or not. He had wanted to marry Helen, and he had married her. That was all there was to it, except, of course, that they had got to show his father that they could make good.

So far as being a husband—good, bad, or indifferent—was concerned, Burke was not giving any more thought to it now than he had given before his marriage. He was quite too busy giving thought to other matters—many other matters.

There was first his work. He hated it. He hated the noise, the smell, the grime, the overalls, the men he worked with, the smug superciliousness of his especial "boss." He felt abused and indignant that he had to endure it all. As if it were necessary to put him through such a course of sprouts as this! As if, when the time came, he could not run the business successfully without all these years of dirt and torture! Was an engineer, then, made to build an engine before he could be taught to handle the throttle? Was a child made to set the type of a primer before he could be taught his letters? Of course not! But they were making him not only set the type, but go down into the mines and dig the stuff the type was made of before they would teach him his letters. Yet they pretended it all must be done if he would ever learn to read—that is, to run the Denby Iron Works. Bah! He had a mind to chuck it all. He would if it weren't for dad. Dad hated quitters. And dad was looking wretched enough, as it was.

And that was another thing—dad.

Undeniably Burke was very unhappy over his father. He did not like to think of him, yet his face was always before him, pale and drawn, as he had seen it at that first interview after his return. As the days passed, Burke, in spite of his wish not to see his father, found himself continually seizing every opportunity that might enable him to see him. Daily he found himself haunting doorways and corridors, quite out of his way, when there was a chance that his father might pass.

He told himself that it was just that he wanted to convince himself that his father did not look quite so bad, after all. But he knew in his heart that it was because he hoped his father would speak to him in the old way, and that it might lead to the tearing down of this horrible high wall of indifference and formality that had risen between them. Burke hated that wall.

The wall was there, however, always. Nothing ever came of these connivings and loiterings except (if it were during working hours) a terse hint from the foreman, perhaps, to get back on his job. How Burke hated that foreman!

And that was another thing—his position among his fellow workmen. He was with them, but not of them. His being among them at all was plainly a huge joke—and when one is acting a tragedy in all seriousness, one does not like to hear chuckles as at a comedy. But, for that matter, Burke found the comedy element always present, wherever he went. The entire town took himself, his work, and his marriage as a huge joke—a subject for gay badinage, jocose slaps on the back, and gleeful cries of:—

"Well, Denby, how goes it? How doth the happy bridegroom?"

And Burke hated that, too.

It seemed to Burke, indeed, sometimes, that he hated everything but Helen. Helen, of course, was a dear—the sweetest little wife in the world. As if any one could help loving Helen! And however disagreeable the day, there was always Helen to go home to at night.

Oh, of course, he had to take that abominable flat along with Helen—naturally, as long as he could not afford to put her in a more expensive place. But that would soon be remedied—just as soon as he got a little ahead.

This "going home to Helen" had been one of Burke's happiest anticipations ever since his marriage. It would be so entrancing to find Helen and Helen's kiss waiting for him each night! Often had such thoughts been in his mind during his honeymoon trip; but never had they been so poignantly promising of joy as they were on that first day at the Works, after his disheartening interview with his father. All the rest of that miserable day it seemed to Burke that the only thing he was living for was the going home to Helen that night.

"Home," to Burke, had always meant a place of peace and rest, of luxurious ease and noiseless servants, of orderly rooms and well-served meals, of mellow lights and softly blended colors. Unconsciously now home still meant the same, with the addition of Helen—Helen, the center of it all. It was this dear vision, therefore, that he treasured all through his honeymoon trip, that he hugged to himself all that wretched first day of work, and that was still his star of hope as he hurried that night toward the Dale Street flat. If he had stopped to think, he would have realized at once that this new home of a day was not the old home of years. But he did not stop to think of anything except that for the first time in his life he was going home from work to Helen, his wife.

Burke Denby never forgot the shock of that first home-going. He opened the door of his apartment—and confronted chaos: a surly janitor struggling with a curtain pole, a confusion of trunks, chairs, a stepladder, and a floor-pail, a disorder of dishes on a coverless table, a smell of burned milk, and a cross, tired, untidy wife who flung herself into his arms with a storm of sobs.

"Home," after that, meant quite something new to Burke Denby. It meant Helen, of course, but—

Still it would be only for a little while, after all, he consoled himself each day. Just as soon as he got ahead a little, it would be different. He could sell the stuff, then; and the very first thing to go would be that hideous purple pillow on the red plush sofa—for that matter, the sofa would follow after mighty quick. And the chairs, too. They were a little worse to sit on than to look at—which was unnecessary. As for the rugs—when it came to those, it would be his turn to select next time. At all events, he would not be obliged to have one that, the minute you opened the door, bounced into your face and screamed "Hullo! I'm here. See me!" How he hated that rug! And the pictures and those cheap gilt vases—everything, of course, would be different in the new home.

Nor did Burke stop to think that this constant shifting, in one's mind, of things that are, to things that may some time be, scarcely makes for content.

Still, Burke could not have forgotten his house-furnishings, even if he had tried to do so, for he had to make payments on them "every few minutes," as he termed it. Indeed, one of the unsolved riddles of his life these days was as to why there were so many more Mondays (the day he paid his installments) than there were Saturdays (the day the Works paid him) in a week. For that matter, after all was said and done, perhaps to nothing was Burke Denby giving more thought these days than to money.

Burke's experience with money heretofore had been to draw a check for what he wanted. True, he sometimes overdrew his account a trifle; but there was always his allowance coming the first of the month; and neither he nor the bank worried.

Now it was quite different. There was no allowance, and no bank—save his pocket, and there was only fifteen dollars a week coming into that. He would not have believed that fifteen dollars a week could go so quickly, and buy so little. Very early in the first month of housekeeping all that remained of his allowance was gone. What did not go at once to make payments on the furniture was paid over to Helen to satisfy some of her many requests for money.

And that was another of Burke's riddles—why Helen needed so much money just to get them something to eat. True, of late, she had not asked for it so frequently. She had not, indeed, asked for any for some time—for which he was devoutly thankful. He would not have liked to refuse her; and he certainly was giving her all that he could afford to give, without her asking. A fellow must smoke some—though Heaven knew he had cut his cigars down, both in quantity and quality, until he had cut out nearly all the pleasure!

Still he was glad to do it for Helen. Helen was a little brick. How pretty she looked when she was holding forth on his "making good," and her not "dragging" him "down"! Bless her heart! As if she could be guilty of such a thing as that! Why, she was going to drag him up—Helen was!

And she was doing pretty well, too, running the little home, for a girl who did not know a thing about it, to begin with. She was doing a whole lot better than at first. Breakfast had not been late for two weeks, nor dinner, either. And she was almost always at the door to kiss him now, too, while at the first he had to hunt her up, only to find her crying in the kitchen, probably—something wrong somewhere.

Oh, to be sure, he was getting a little tired of potato salad, and he always had abhorred those potato-chippy things; and he himself did not care much for cold meat. But, of course, after she got a little more used to things she wouldn't serve that sort of trash quite so often. He would be getting real things to eat, pretty soon—good, juicy beefsteaks and roasts, and nice fresh vegetables and fruit shortcakes, with muffins and griddle-cakes for breakfast. But Helen was a little brick—Helen was. And she was doing splendidly!

CHAPTER VII

STUMBLING-BLOCKS

Mrs. Burke Denby was a little surprised at the number of letters directed to her husband in the morning mail that first day of November, until she noticed the familiar names in the upper left-hand corners of several of the envelopes.

"Oh, it's the bills," she murmured, drawing in her breath a little uncertainly. "To-day's the first, and they said they'd send them then. But I didn't think there'd be such a lot of them. Still, I've had things at all those places. Well, anyway, he'll be glad to pay them all at once, without my teasing for money all the time," she finished with resolute insistence, as she turned back to her work.

If, now that the time had come, and the bills lay before her in all their fearsome reality, Helen was beginning to doubt the wisdom of her financial system, she would not admit it, even to herself. And she still wore a determinedly cheerful face when her husband came home to dinner that night. She went into the kitchen as he began to open his mail—she was reminded of a sudden something that needed her attention. Two minutes later she nearly dropped the dish of potato salad she was carrying, at the sound of his voice from the doorway.

"Helen, what in Heaven's name is the meaning of these bills?" He was in the kitchen now, holding out a sheaf of tightly clutched papers in each hand.

Helen set the potato salad down hastily.

"Why, Burke, don't—don't look at me so!"

"But what does this mean? What are these things?"

"Why, they—they're just bills, I suppose. They said they'd be."

"Bills! Great Cæsar, Helen! You don't mean to say that you do know about them—that you bought all this stuff?"

Helen's lip began to quiver.

"Burke, don't—please don't look like that. You frighten me."

"Frighten you! What do you think of me?—springing a thing like this!"

"Why, Burke, I—I thought you'd like it."

"Like it!"

"Y-yes—that I didn't have to ask you for money all the time. And you'd have to p-pay 'em some time, anyhow. We had to eat, you know."

"But, great Scott, Helen! We aren't a hotel! Look at that—'salad'—'salad'—'salad,'" he exploded, pointing a shaking finger at a series of items on the uppermost bill in his left hand. "There's tons of the stuff there, and I always did abominate it!"

"Why, Burke, I—I—" And the floods came.

"Oh, thunderation! Helen, Helen, don't—please don't!"

"But I thought I was going to p-please you, and you called me a h-hotel, and said you a-abominated it!" she wailed, stumbling away blindly.

With a despairing ejaculation Burke flung the bills to the floor, and caught the sob-shaken little figure of his wife in his arms.

"There, there, I was a brute, and I didn't mean it—not a word of it. Sweetheart, don't, please don't," he begged. "Why, girlie, all the bills in Christendom aren't worth a tear from your dear eyes. Come, won't you stop?"

But Helen did not stop, at once. The storm was short, but tempestuous. At the end of ten minutes, however, together they went into the dining-room. Helen carried the potato salad (which Burke declared he was really hungry for to-day), and Burke carried the bills crumpled in one hand behind his back, his other arm around his wife's waist.

That evening a remorseful, wistful-eyed wife and a husband with an "I'll-be-patient-if-it-kills-me" air went over the subject of household finances, and came to an understanding.

There were to be no more charge accounts. For the weekly expenses Helen was to have every cent that could possibly be spared; but what she could not pay cash for, they must go without, if they starved. In a pretty little book she must put down on one side the money received. On the other, the money spent. She was a dear, good little wife, and he loved her 'most to death; but he couldn't let her run up bills when he had not a red cent to pay them with. He would borrow, of course, for these—he was not going to have any dirty little tradesmen pestering him with bills all the time! But this must be the last. Never again!

And Helen said yes, yes, indeed. And she was very sure she would love to keep the pretty little book, and put down all the money she got, and all she spent.

All this was very well in theory. But in practice—

At the end of the first week Helen brought her book to her husband, and spread it open before him with great gusto.

On the one side were several entries of small sums, amounting to eight dollars received. On the other side were the words: "Spent all but seventeen cents."

"Oh, but you should put down what you spent it for," corrected Burke, with a merry laugh.

"Why?"

"Why, er—so you can see—er—what the money goes for."

"What's the difference—if it goes?"

"Oh, shucks! You can't keep a cash account that way! You have to put 'em both down, and then—er—balance up and see if your cash comes right. See, like this," he cried, taking a little book from his pocket. "I'm keeping one." And he pointed to a little list which read:—

"Now that's what I spent yesterday. You want to put yours down like that, then add 'em up and subtract it from what you receive. What's left should equal your cash on hand."

"Hm-m; well, all right," assented Helen dubiously, as she picked up her own little book.

Helen looked still more dubious when she presented her book for inspection the next week.

"I don't think I like it this way," she announced, with a pout.

"Why not?"

"Why, Burke, the mean old thing steals—actually steals! It says I ought to have one dollar and forty-five cents; and I haven't got but fourteen cents! It's got it itself—somewhere!"

"Ho, that's easy, dear!" The man gave an indulgent laugh. "You didn't put 'em all down—what you spent."

"But I did—everything I could remember. Besides, I borrowed fifty cents of Mrs. Jones. I didn't put that down anywhere. I didn't know where to put it."

"Helen! You borrowed money—of that woman?"

"She isn't 'that woman'! She's my friend, and I like her," flared Helen, hotly. "I had to have some eggs, and I didn't have a cent of money. I shall pay her back, of course,—next time you pay me."

Burke frowned.

"Oh, come, come, Helen, this will never do," he remonstrated. "Of course you'll pay her back; but I can't have my wife borrowing of the neighbors!"

"But I had to! I had to have some eggs," she choked, "and—"

"Yes, yes, I know. But I mean, we won't again," interrupted the man desperately, fleeing to cover in the face of the threatening storm of sobs. "And, anyhow, we'll see that you have some money now," he cried gayly, plunging his hands into his pockets, and pulling out all the bills and change he had. "There, 'with all my worldly goods I thee endow,'" he laughed, lifting his hands above her bright head, and showering the money all over her.

Like children then they scrambled for the rolling nickels and elusive dimes; and in the ensuing frolic the tiresome account-book was forgotten—which was exactly what Burke had hoped would happen.

This was the second week. At the end of the third, the "mean old thing" was in a worse muddle than ever, according to Helen; and, for her part, she would rather never buy anything at all if she had got to go and tell that nuisance of a book every time!

The fourth Saturday night Helen did not produce the book at all.

"Oh, I don't keep that any longer," she announced, with airy nonchalance, in answer to Burke's question. "It never came right, and I hated it, anyhow. So what's the use? I've got what I've got, and I've spent what I've spent. So what's the difference?" And Burke, after a feeble remonstrance, gave it up as a bad job. Incidentally it might be mentioned that Burke was having a little difficulty with his own cash account, and was tempted to accuse his own book of stealing—else where did the money go?

It was the next Monday night that Burke came home with a radiant countenance.

"Gleason's here—up at the Hancock House. He's coming down after dinner."

"Who's Gleason?"

Helen's tone was a little fretful—there was a new, intangible something in her husband's voice that Helen did not understand, and that she did not think she liked.

"Gleason! Who's Doc Gleason!" exclaimed Burke, with widening eyes. "Oh, I forgot. You don't know him, do you?" he added, with a slight frown. Burke Denby was always forgetting that Helen knew nothing of his friends or of himself until less than a year before. "Well, Doc Gleason is the best ever. He went to Egypt with us last year, and to Alaska the year before."

"How old is he?"

"Old? Why, I don't know—thirty—maybe more. He must be a little more, come to think of it. But you never think of age with the doctor. He'll be young when he's ninety."

"And you like him—so well?" Her voice was a little wistful.

"Next to dad—always have. You'll like him, too. You can't help it. He's mighty interesting."

"And he's a doctor?"

"Yes, and no. Oh, he graduated and hung out his shingle; but he never practiced much. He had money enough, anyway, and he got interested in scientific research—antiquarian, mostly, though he's done a bit of mountain-climbing and glacier-studying for the National Geographic Society."

"Antiquarian? Oh, yes, I know—old things. Mother was that way, too. She had an old pewter plate, and a dark blue china teapot, homely as a hedge fence, I thought, but she doted on 'em. And she doted on ancestors, too. She had one in that old ship—Mayflower, wasn't it?"

Burke laughed.

"Mayflower! My dear child, the Mayflower is a mere infant-in-arms in the doctor's estimation. The doctor goes back to prehistoric times for his playground, and to the men of the old Stone Age for his preferred playmates."

"Older than the Mayflower, then?"

"A trifle—some thousands of years."

"Goodness! How can he? I thought the Mayflower was bad enough. But what does he do—collect things?"

"Yes, to some extent; he has a fine collection of Babylonian tablets, and—"

"Oh, I know—those funny little brown and yellow cakes like soap, all cut into with pointed little marks—what do you call it?—like your father has in his library!"

"The cuneiform writing? Yes. As I said, the doctor has a fine collection of tablets, and of some other things; but principally he studies and goes on trips. It was a trip to the Spanish grottoes that got him interested in the archæological business in the first place, and put him out of conceit with doctoring. He goes a lot now, sometimes independently, sometimes in the interest of some society. He does in a scientific way what dad and I have done for fun—traveling and collecting, I mean. Then, too, he has written a book or two which are really authoritative in their line. He's a great chap—the doctor is. Wait till you see him. I've told him about you, too."

"Then you told him—that is—he knows—about the marriage."

"Why, sure he does!" Burke's manner was a bit impatient. "What do you suppose, when he's coming here to-night? Now, mind, put on your prettiest frock and your sweetest smile. I want him to see why I married you," he challenged banteringly. "I want him to see what a treasure I've got. And say, dearie, do you suppose—could we have him to dinner, or something? Could you manage it? I wanted to ask him to-night; but of course I couldn't—without your knowing beforehand."

"Mercy, no, Burke!" shuddered the young housekeeper. "Don't you dare—when I don't know it."

"But if you do know it—" He paused hopefully.

"Why, y-yes, I guess so. Of course I could get things I was sure of, like potato salad and—"

Burke sat back in his chair.

"But, Helen, I'm afraid—I don't think—that is, I'm 'most sure Gleason doesn't like potato salad," he stammered.

"Doesn't he? Well, he needn't eat it, then. We'll have all the more left for the next day."

"But, Helen, er—"

"Oh, I'll have chips, too; don't worry, dear. I'll give him something to eat," she promised gayly. "Do you suppose I'm going to have one of your swell friends come here, and then have you ashamed of me? You just wait and see!"

"Er, no—no, indeed, of course not," plunged in her husband feverishly, trying to ward off a repetition of the "swell"—a word he particularly abhorred.

Several times in the last two months he had heard Helen use this word—twice when she had informed him with great glee that some swell friends of his from Elm Hill had come in their carriage to call; and again quite often when together on the street they met some one whom he knew. He thought he hated the word a little more bitterly every time he heard it.

For several weeks now the Denbys had been receiving calls—Burke Denby was a Denby of Denby Mansion even though he was temporarily marooned on Dale Street at a salary of sixty dollars a month. Besides, to many, Dale Street and the sixty dollars, with the contributory elements of elopement and irate parent, only added piquancy and interest to what would otherwise have been nothing but the conventional duty call.

To Helen, in the main, these calls were a welcome diversion—"just grand," indeed. To Burke, on whom the curiosity element was not lost, they were an impertinence and a nuisance. Yet he endured them, and even welcomed them, in a way; for he wanted Helen to know his friends, and to like them—better than she liked Mrs. Jones. He did not care for Mrs. Jones. She talked too loud, and used too much slang. He did not like to have Helen with her. Always, therefore, after callers had been there, his first eager question was: "How did you like them, dear?" He wanted so much that Helen should like them!

To-night, however, in thinking of the prospective visit from Gleason, he was wondering how the doctor would like Helen—not how Helen would like the doctor. The change was significant but unconscious—perhaps all the more significant because it was unconscious.

Until he had reached home that night, Burke had been so overjoyed at the prospect of an old-time chat with his friend that he had given little thought to Gleason's probable opinion of the Dale Street flat and its furnishings. Now, with his eyes on the obtrusive unharmony all about him, and his memory going back to the doctor's well-known fastidiousness of taste, he could think of little else. He did hope Gleason would not think he had selected those horrors! Of course he had already explained—a little—about his father's disapproval of the marriage, and the resulting cutting-off of his allowance; but even that would not excuse (to Gleason) the riot of glaring reds and pinks and purples in his living-rooms; and one could not very well explain that one's wife liked the horrors— He pulled himself up sharply. Of course Helen herself was a dear. He hoped Gleason would see how dear she was. He wanted Gleason to like Helen.

As the hour drew near for the expected guest's arrival, Burke Denby, greatly to his vexation, found himself growing more and more nervous. He asked himself indignantly if he were going to let a purple cushion entirely spoil the pleasure of the evening. Not until he had seen Gleason that afternoon had he realized how sorely he had missed his father's companionship all these past weeks. Not until he had found himself bubbling over with the things he wanted to talk about that evening had he realized how keenly he had missed the mental stimulus of that father's comradeship. And now, for the sake of a purple cushion, was he to lose the only chance he had had for weeks of conversing with an intelligent—

With an almost audible gasp the shocked and shamed husband pulled himself up again.

Well, of course Helen was intelligent. It was only that she was not interested in, and did not know about, these things he was thinking of; and—

The doorbell rang sharply, and Burke leaped to his feet and hastened to press the button that would release the catch of the lock at the entrance below.

"Why, Burke, you never called down through the tube at all, and asked who it was," remonstrated Helen, hurrying in, her fingers busy with the final fastenings of her dress.

"You bet your life I didn't," laughed Burke, a bit grimly. "You've got another guess coming if you think I'm going to hold Doc Gleason off at the end of a 'Who is it?' bellowed into his ear from that impertinent copper trumpet down there."

"Why, Burke, that's all right. Everybody does it," maintained Helen. "We have to, else we'd be letting all sorts of folks in, and—"

At a warning gesture from her husband she stopped just as a tall, smooth-shaven man with kind eyes and a grave smile appeared at the open hallway door.

"Glad to see you, doctor," cried Burke, extending a cordial hand, that yet trembled a little. "Let me present you to my wife."

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," bobbed Helen. And because she was nervous she said the next thing that came into her head. "And I hope you're pleased to meet me, too. All Burke's friends are so swell, you know, that—"

"Er—ah—" broke in the dismayed husband.

But the visitor advanced quietly, still with that same grave smile, and clasped Mrs. Denby's extended hand.

"I am very sure Burke's friends are, indeed, very glad to meet you," he said. "Certainly I am," he finished, with a cordial heartiness so nicely balanced that even Burke Denby's sensitive alertness could find in it neither the overzealousness of insincerity nor the indifference of disdain.

Even when, a minute later, they turned and went into the living room, Burke's still apprehensive watchfulness could detect in his friend's face not one trace of the dismayed horror he had been dreading to see there.

"Gleason's a brick," he sighed to himself, trying to relax his tense muscles. "As if I didn't know that every last gimcrack in this miserable room would fairly scream at him the moment he entered that door!"

In spite of everybody's very evident efforts to have everything pass off pleasantly, the evening was anything but a success. Helen, at first shy and ill at ease, said little. Then, as if suddenly realizing her deficiencies as a hostess, she tried to remedy it by talking very loud and very fast about anything that came into her mind, reveling especially in minute details concerning their own daily lives, ranging all the way from stories of the elopement and the house-furnishing on the installment plan to hilarious accounts of her experiences with the cookbook and the account-book.

Very plainly Helen was doing her best to "show off." From one to the other she looked, with little nods and coquettish smiles.

To Gleason her manner said: "You see now why Burke fell in love with me, don't you?" To Burke it said: "There, now I guess you ain't ashamed of me!"

The doctor, still with the grave smile and kindly eyes, listened politely, uttering now and then a pleasant word or two, in a way that even the distraught husband could not criticize. As for the husband himself, between his anger at Helen and his anger at himself because of his anger at Helen, he was in a woeful condition of nervousness and ill-humor. Vainly trying to wrest the ball of conversation from Helen's bungling fingers, he yet felt obliged to laugh in apparent approval at her wild throws. Nor was he unaware of the sorry figure he thus made of himself. Having long since given up all hope of the anticipated chat with his friend, his one aim now was to get the visit over, and the doctor out of the house as soon as possible. Yet the very fact that he did want the visit over and the doctor gone only angered him the more, and put into his mouth words that were a mockery of cordiality. No wonder, then, that for Burke the evening was a series of fidgetings, throat-clearings, and nervous laughs that (if he had but known it) were fully as distressing to the doctor as they were to himself.

At half-past nine the doctor rose to his feet.

"Well, good people, I must go," he announced cheerily. (For the last half-hour the doctor had been wondering just how soon he might make that statement.) "It's half-past nine."

"Pshaw! That ain't late," protested Helen.

"No, indeed," echoed Burke—though Burke had promptly risen with his guest.

"Perhaps not, to you; but to me—" The doctor let a smile finish his sentence.

"But you're coming again," gurgled Helen. "You're coming to dinner. Burke said you was."

Burke's mouth flew open—but just in time he snapped it shut. He had remembered that hospitable husbands do not usually retract their wives' invitations with a terrified "For Heaven's sake, no!"—at least, not in the face of the prospective guest. Before he could put the new, proper words into his mouth, the doctor spoke.

"Thank you. You're very kind; but I'm afraid not—this time, Mrs. Denby. My stay is to be very short. But I'm glad to have had this little visit," he finished, holding out his hand.

And again Burke, neither then, nor when he looked straight into the doctor's eyes a moment later, could find aught in word or manner upon which to pin his watchful suspicions.

The next moment the doctor was gone.

Helen yawned luxuriously, openly— Helen never troubled to hide her yawns.

"Now I like him," she observed emphatically, but not very distinctly (owing to the yawn). "If all your swell friends were—"

"Helen, for Heaven's sake, isn't there any word but that abominable 'swell' that you can use?" interrupted her husband, seizing the first pretext that offered itself as a scapegoat for his irritation.

Helen laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

"All right; 'stuck up,' then, if you like that better. But, for my part, I like 'swell' best. It's so expressive, so much more swell—there, you see," she laughed, with another shrug; "it just says itself. But, really, I do like the doctor. I think he's just grand. Where does he live?"

"Boston." Burke hated "grand" only one degree less than "swell."

"Is he married?"

"No."

"How old did you say he was?"

"I didn't say. I don't know. Thirty-five, probably."

"Why, Burke, what's the matter? What are you so short about? Don't you like it that I like him? I thought you wanted me to like your friends."

"Yes, yes, I know; and I do, Helen, of course." Burke got to his feet and took a nervous turn about the tiny room.

Helen watched him with widening eyes. The look of indolent satisfaction was gone from her face. She was not yawning now.

"Why, Burke, what is the matter?" she catechized. "Wasn't I nice to him? Didn't I talk to him, and just lay myself out to entertain him? Didn't I ask him to dinner, and—"

"Dinner!" Burke fairly snarled the word out as he wheeled sharply. "Holy smoke, Helen! I wonder if you think I'd have that man come here to dinner, or come here ever again to hear you— Oh, hang it all, what am I saying?" he broke off, jerking himself about with a despairing gesture.

Helen came now to her feet. Her eyes blazed.

"I know. You was ashamed of me," she panted.

"Oh, come, come; nonsense, Helen!"

"You was."

"Of course I wasn't."

"Then what was the matter?"

"Nothing; nothing, Helen."

"There was, too. Don't you suppose I know? But I tried to do all right. I tried to make you p-proud of me," she choked. "I know I didn't talk much at first. I was scared and stupid, he was so fine and grand. And I didn't know a thing about all that Egyptian stuff you was talking about. Then I thought how 'shamed you'd be of me, and I just made up my mind I would talk and show him it wasn't a—a little fool that you'd married; and I s'posed I was doing what you wanted me to. But I see now I wasn't. I wasn't fine enough for your grand friend. I ain't never fine enough for 'em. But I don't care. I hate 'em all—every one of 'em! I'd rather have Mrs. Jones twice over. She isn't ashamed of me. I thought I was p-pleasing you; and now—now—" Her words were lost in a storm of sobs.

There was but one thing to be done, of course; and Burke did it. He took her in his arms and soothed and petted and praised her. What he said he did not know—nor care, for that matter, so long as it served ever so slightly to dam the flood of Helen's tears. That, for the moment, was the only thing worth living for. The storm passed at last, as storms must; but it was still a teary little wife that received her husband's good-night kiss some time later. Burke did not go to sleep very readily that night. In his mind he was going over his prospective meeting with his friend Gleason the next day.

What would Gleason say? How would he act? What would he himself say? What could he say? He could not very well apologize for—

Even to himself Burke would not finish the sentence.

Apologize? Indeed, no! As if there were anything, anyway, to apologize for! He would meet Gleason exactly as usual. He would carry his head high. There should be about him no air of apology or appeal. By his every act and word he would show that he was not in need of sympathy, and that he should resent comment. He might even ask Gleason to dinner. He believed he would ask him to dinner. In no other way, certainly, could he so convincingly show how—er—proud he was of his wife.

Burke went to sleep then.

It had been arranged that the two men should meet at noon for luncheon; and promptly on time Burke appeared at the hotel. His chin was indeed high, and for the first two minutes he was painfully guarded and self-conscious in his bearing. But under the unstudied naturalness of the doctor's manner, he speedily became his normal self; and in five minutes the two were conversing with their old ease and enthusiasm.

The doctor had with him an Egyptian scarab with a rarely interesting inscription, a new acquisition; also a tiny Babylonian tablet of great value. In both of them Burke was much interested. In the wake then of a five-thousand-year-old stylus, it is not strange that he forgot present problems.

"I'm taking these up to-night for your father to see," smiled the doctor, after a short silence. "He writes me he's got a new tablet himself; a very old one. He thinks he's made a discovery on it, too. He swears he's picked out a veritable thumb-mark on one side."

"Nonsense! Dad's always discovering things," grinned Burke. "You know dad."

"But he says this is a sure thing. It's visible with the naked eye; but under the microscope it's wonderful. And— But, never mind! We'll see for ourselves to-night. You're coming up, of course."

"Sure! And I want to see—" The young man stopped abruptly. A painful color had swept to his forehead. "Er—no. On second thoughts I—I can't to-night," he corrected. In its resolute emphasis his voice sounded almost harsh. "But you—you're coming to dinner with us—to-morrow night, aren't you?"

"Oh, no; no, thank you," began the doctor hastily. Then, suddenly, he encountered his friend's steadfast eye upon him. "Er—that is," he amended in his turn, "unless you—you are willing to let me come very informally, as I shall have to leave almost at once afterwards. I'm taking the eight-thirty train that evening."

"Very good. We shall expect you," answered the younger man, with a curious relaxation of voice and manner—a relaxation that puzzled and slightly worried the doctor, who was wondering whether it were the relaxation of relief or despair. The doctor was not sure yet that he had rightly interpreted that steadfast gaze. Two minutes later, Burke, once again self-conscious, constrained, and with his head high, took his leave.

On his way back to work Burke berated himself soundly. Having deliberately bound himself to the martyrdom of a dinner to his friend, he was now insufferably angry that he should regard it as a martyrdom at all. Also he knew within himself that there seemed, for the moment, nothing that he would not give to spend the coming evening in the quiet restfulness of his father's library with the doctor and an Egyptian scarab.

As if all the Egyptian scarabs and Babylonian tablets in the world could balance the scale with Helen on the other side!

CHAPTER VIII

DIVERGING WAYS

Of course the inevitable happened. However near two roads may be at the start, if they diverge ever so slightly and keep straight ahead, there is bound to be in time all the world between them.

In the case of Burke and Helen, their roads never started together at all: they merely crossed; and at the crossing came the wedding. They were miles apart at the start—miles apart in tastes, traditions, and environment. In one respect only were they alike: undisciplined self-indulgence—a likeness that meant only added differences when it came to the crossing; and that made it all the more nearly impossible to merge those two diverging roads into one wide way leading straight on to wedded happiness.

All his life Burke had consulted no one's will but his own. It was not easy now to walk when he wanted to sit still, nor to talk when he wanted to read; especially as the one who wanted him to walk and to talk happened to be a willful young person who all her life had been in the habit of walking and talking when she wanted to.

Burke, accustomed from babyhood to leaving his belongings wherever he happened to drop them, was first surprised and then angry that he did not find them magically restored to their proper places, as in the days of his boyhood and youth. Burke abhorred disorder. Helen, accustomed from her babyhood to being picked-up after, easily drifted into the way of letting all things, both hers and his, lie as they were. It saved a great deal of work.

Even so simple a matter as the temperature of a sleeping-room had its difficulties. Burke liked air. He wanted the windows wide open. Helen, trained to think night air was damp and dangerous, wanted them shut. And when two people are sleepy, cross, and tired, it is appalling what a range of woe can lie in the mere opening and shutting of a window.

Burke was surprised, annoyed, and dismayed. Being unaccustomed to disappointments he did not know how to take them gracefully. This being married was not proving to be at all the sort of thing he had pictured to himself. He had supposed that life, married life, was to be a new wonder every day; an increasing delight every hour. It was neither. Living now was a matter of never-ending adjustment, self-sacrifice, and economy. And he hated them all. In spite of himself he was getting into debt, and he hated debt. It made a fellow feel cheap and mean.

Even Helen was not what he had thought she was. He was ashamed to own it, even to himself, but there was a good deal about Helen that he did not like. She was not careful about her appearance. She was actually almost untidy at times. He hated those loose, sloppy things she sometimes wore, and he abominated those curl-paper things in her hair. She was willful and fretful, and she certainly did not know how to give a fellow a decent meal or a comfortable place to stay. For his part, he did not think a girl had any right to marry until she knew something about running a simple home.

Then there was her constant chatter. Was she not ever going to talk about anything but the silly little everyday happenings of her work? A fellow wanted to hear something, when he came home tired at night, besides complaints that the range didn't work, or that the grocer forgot his order, or that the money was out.

Why, Helen used to be good company, cheerful, often witty. Where were her old-time sparkle and radiance? Her talk now was a meaningless chatter of trivial things, or an irritating, wailing complaint of everything under the sun, chiefly revolving around the point of "how different everything was" from what she expected. Great Scott! As if he had not found some things different! That evidently was what marriage was—different. But talking about it all the time did not help any.

Couldn't she read? But, then, if she did read, it would be only the newspaper account of the latest murder; and then she would want to talk about that. She never read anything worth while.

And it was for this, this being married to Helen, that he had given up so much: dad, his home, everything. She didn't appreciate it—Helen didn't. She did not rightly estimate what he was being made to suffer.

That there was any especial meaning in all this that he himself should take to heart—that there was any course open to him but righteous discontent and rebellion—never occurred to Burke. His training of frosted cakes and toy shotguns had taught him nothing of the traditional "two bears," "bear" and "forbear." The marriage ceremony had not meant to him "to be patient, tender, and sympathetic." It had meant the "I will" of self-assertion, not the "I will" of self-discipline. That Helen ought to change many of her traits and habits he was convinced. That there might be some in himself that needed changing, or that the mere fact of his having married Helen might have entailed upon himself certain obligations as to making the best of what he had deliberately chosen, did not once occur to him.

As for Helen—Helen was facing her own disillusions. She was not trying now to be the daintily gowned wife welcoming her husband to a well-kept home. She had long since decided that that was impossible—on sixty dollars a month. She was tired of being a martyr wife. Even the laurel wreath of praise had lost its allurement: she would not get it, probably, even if she earned it; and, anyway, she would be dead from trying to get it. And for her part she would rather have some fun while she was living.

But she wasn't having any fun. Things were so different. Everything was different. She had not supposed being married was like this: one long grind of housework from morning till night, and for a man who did not care. And Burke did not care—now. Once, the first thing he wanted when he came into the house was a kiss and a word from her. Now he wanted his dinner. And he was so fussy, too! She could get along with cold things; but he wanted hot ones, and lots of them. And he always wanted finger-bowls and lots of spoons, and everything fixed just so on the table, too. He said it wasn't that he wanted "style." It was just that he wanted things decent. As if she hadn't had things decent herself—and without all that fuss and clutter!

After dinner he never wanted to talk now, or to go to walk. He just wanted to read or study. He said he was studying; something about his work. As if once he would have cared more for any old work than for her!

And she was so lonely! There was nobody now for her to be with. Mrs. Jones had moved away, and there were never any callers now. She had returned every one of the calls she had had from Burke's fine friends. She had put on her new red dress and her best hat with the pink roses; and she had tried to be just as bright and entertaining as she knew how to be. But they never came again, so of course she could not go to see them. She had gone, once or twice. But Burke said she must not do that. It was not proper to return your own calls. If they wanted to see her they would come themselves. But they never came. Probably, anyhow, they did not want to see her; and that was the trouble. Not that she cared! They were a "stuck-up" lot, anyway; and she was just as good as they were. She had told one woman so, once—the woman that carried her eyeglasses on the end of a little stick and stared. That woman always had made her mad. So it was just as well, perhaps, that they did not come any more, after all. Burke was ashamed of her, anyway, when they did come. She knew that. He did not like anything she did nowadays. He was always telling her he did wish she would stop saying "you was," or holding her fork like that, or making so much noise eating soup, and a dozen other things. As if nobody in the house had a right to do anything but his way!

It had been so different at home! There everything she did was just right. And she was never lonely. There were the parties and the frolics and the sleigh-rides, and the girls running in all the time, and the boys every evening on the porch, or in the parlor, or taking her buggy-riding. Nothing there was ever complete without her. While here— Well, who supposed being married meant working like a slave all day, and being cooped up all the evening with a man whose nose was buried in a book, and who scarcely spoke to you!

And there was the money. Burke acted, for all the world, as if he thought she ate money, and ate it whether she was hungry or not, just to spite him. As if she didn't squeeze every penny till it fairly shrieked, now; and as if anybody could make ten dollars a week go further than she did! To be sure, at first she had been silly and extravagant, running up bills, and borrowing of Mrs. Jones, as she did. And of course she was a little unreasonable and childish about keeping that account-book. But that was only at the first, when she was quite ignorant and inexperienced. It was very different now. She kept a cash account, and most of the time it came right. How she wished she had an allowance, though! But Burke utterly refused to give her that. Said she'd be extravagant and spend it all the first day. As if she had not learned better than that by bitter experience! And as if anything could be worse than the way they were trying to get along now, with her teasing for money all the time, and him insisting on seeing the bills, and then asking how they could manage to eat so many eggs, and saying he should think she used butter to oil the floors with. He didn't see how it could go so fast any other way!

And wasn't he always telling her she did not manage right? And didn't he give her particular fits one day and an awful lecture on wastefulness, just because he happened to find half a loaf of mouldy bread in the jar? Just as if he didn't spend something—and a good big something, too!—on all those cigars he smoked. Yet he flew into fits over a bit of mouldy bread of hers.

To be sure, when she cried, he called himself a brute, and said he didn't mean it, and it was only because he hated so to have her pinching and saving all the time that it made him mad—raving mad. Just as if she was to blame that they did not have any money!

But she was to blame, of course, in a way. If it had not been for her, he would be living at home with all the money he wanted. Sometimes it came to her with sickening force that maybe Burke was thinking that, too. Was he? Could it be that he was sorry he had married her? Very well—her chin came up proudly. He need not stay if he did not want to. He could go. But—the chin was not so high, now—he was all there was. She had nobody but Burke now. Could it be—

She believed she would ask Dr. Gleason some time. She liked the doctor. He had been there several times now, and she felt real well acquainted with him. Perhaps he would know. But, after all, she was not going to worry. She did not believe that really Burke wished he had not married her. It was only that he was tired and fretted with his work. It would be better by and by, when he had got ahead a little. And of course he would get ahead. They would not always have to live like this!

It was in March that Burke came home to dinner one evening with a radiant face, yet with an air of worried excitement.

"It's dad. He's sent for me," he explained, in answer to his wife's questions.

"Sent for you!"

"Yes. He isn't very well, Brett says. He wants to see me."

"Humph! After all this time! I wouldn't go a step if I was you."

"Helen! Not go to my father?"

Helen quaked a little under the fire in her husband's eyes; but she held her ground.

"I don't care. He's treated you like dirt. You know he has."

"I know he's sick and has sent for me. And I know I'm going to him. That's enough for me to know—at present," retorted the man, getting to his feet, and leaving his dinner almost untasted.

Half an hour later he appeared before her, freshly shaved, and in the radiant good humor that seems to follow a bath and fresh garments as a natural consequence. "Come, chicken, give us a kiss," he cried gayly; "and don't sit up for me: I may be late."

"My, but ain't we fixed up!" pouted Helen jealously. "I should think you was going to see your best girl."

"I am," laughed Burke boyishly. "Dad was my best girl—till I got you. Good-bye! I'm off."

"Good-bye." Helen's lips still pouted, and her eyes burned somberly as she sat back in her chair.

Outside the house Burke drew a long breath, and yet a longer one. It seemed as if he could not inhale deeply enough the crisp, bracing air. Then, with an eager stride that would cover the distance in little more than half the usual time, he set off toward Elm Hill. There was only joyous anticipation in his face now. The worry was all gone. After all, had not Brett said that this illness of dad's was nothing serious?

For a week Burke had known that something was wrong—that his father was not at the Works. In vain had he haunted office doors and corridors for a glimpse of a face that never appeared. Then had come the news that John Denby was ill. A paralyzing fear clutched the son's heart.

Was this to be the end, then? Was dad to—die, and never to know, never to read his boy's heart? Was this the end of all hopes of some day seeing the old look of love and pride in his father's eyes? Then it would, indeed, be the end of—everything, if dad died; for what was the use of struggling, of straining every nerve to make good, if dad was not to be there to—know?

It had been at this point that Burke, in spite of his hurt pride, and of his very lively doubts as to the cordiality of his reception, had almost determined to go himself to the old home and demand to see his father. Then, just in time, had come Brett's wonderful message that his father wished to see him, and that he was not, after all, fatally or even seriously ill.

Dad was not going to die, then; and dad wished to see him—wished to see him!

Burke drew in his breath now again, and bounded up the great stone steps of Denby Mansion, two at a time. The next minute, for the first time since his marriage the summer before, he stood in the wide, familiar hallway.

Benton, the old butler, took his hat and coat; and the way he took them had in it all the flattering deference of the well-trained servant, and the rapturous joy of the head of a house welcoming a dear wanderer home.

Burke looked into the beaming old face and shining eyes—and swallowed hard before he could utter an unsteady "How are you, Benton?"

"I'm very well, sir, thank you, sir. And it's glad I am to see you, Master Burke. This way, please. The master's in the library, sir."

Unconsciously Burke Denby lifted his chin. A long-lost something seemed to have come back to him. He could not himself have defined it; and he certainly could not have told why, at that moment, he should suddenly have thought of the supercilious face of his hated "boss" at the Works.

Behind Benton's noiseless steps Burke's feet sank into luxurious velvet depths. His eyes swept from one dear familiar object to another, in the great, softly lighted hall, and leaped ahead to the open door of the library. Then, somehow, he found himself face to face with his father in the dear, well-remembered room.

"Well, Burke, my boy, how are you?"

They were the same words that had been spoken months before in the President's office at the Denby Iron Works, and they were spoken by the same voice. They were spoken to the accompaniment of an outstretched hand, too, in each case. But, to Burke, who had heard them on both occasions, they were as different as darkness and daylight. He could not have defined it, even to himself; but he knew, the minute he grasped the outstretched hand and looked into his father's eyes, that the hated, impenetrable, insurmountable "wall" was gone. Yet there was nothing said, nothing done, except a conventional "Just a little matter of business, Burke, that I wanted to talk over with you," from the elder man; and an equally conventional "Yes, sir," from his son.

Then the two sat down. But, for Burke, the whole world had burst suddenly into song.

It was, indeed, a simple matter of business. It was not even an important one. Ordinarily it would have been Brett's place, or even one of his assistants', to speak of it. But the President of the Denby Iron Works took it up point by point, and dwelt lovingly on each detail. And Burke, his heart one wild pæan of rejoicing, sat with a grave countenance, listening attentively.

And when there was left not one small detail upon which to pin another word, and when Burke was beginning to dread the moment of dismissal, John Denby turned, as if casually, to a small clay tablet on the desk near him. And Burke, following his father into a five-thousand-year-old past to decipher a Babylonian thumb-print, lost all fear of that dread dismissal.

Later came old Benton with the ale and the little cakes that Burke had always loved. With a pressure of his thumb, then, John Denby switched off half the lights, and the two, father and son, sat down before the big fireplace, with the cakes and ale between them on a low stand.

Behind the century-old andirons, the fire leaped and crackled, throwing weird shadows over the beamed ceiling, the book-lined walls, the cabinets of curios, bringing out here and there a bit of gold tooling behind a glass door or a glinting flash from bronze or porcelain. With a body at ease and a mind at rest, Burke leaned back in his chair with a long-drawn sigh, each tingling sense ecstatically responsive to every charm of light and shade and luxury.

Half an hour later he rose to go. John Denby, too, rose to his feet.

"You'll come again, of course," the father said, as he held out his hand. For the first time that evening there was a faint touch of constraint in his manner. "Suppose you come to dinner—Sunday. Will you?"

"Surely I will, and be glad—" With a swift surge of embarrassed color Burke Denby stopped short. In one shamed, shocked instant it had come to him that he had forgotten Helen—forgotten her! Not for a long hour had he even remembered that there was such a person in existence. "Er—ah—that is," he began again, stammeringly.

An odd expression crossed John Denby's countenance.

"You will, of course, bring your wife," he said. "Good-night."

Burke mumbled an incoherent something and fled. The next moment he found himself in the hall with Benton, deferential and solicitous, holding his coat.

Again out in the crisp night air, Burke drew a long breath. Was it true? Had dad invited him to dinner next Sunday? And with Helen? What had happened? Had dad's heart got the better of his pride? Had he decided that quarreling did not pay? Did this mean the beginning of the end? Was he ready to take his son back into his heart? He had not said anything, really. He had just talked in the usual way, as if nothing had happened. But that would be like dad. Dad hated scenes. Dad would never say: "I'm sorry I was so harsh with you; come back—you and Helen. I want you!"—and then fall to crying and kissing like a woman. Dad would never do that.

It would be like dad just to pick up the thread of the old comradeship exactly where he had dropped it months ago. And that was what he had seemed to be doing that evening. He had talked just as he used to talk—except that never once had he mentioned—mother. Burke remembered this now, and wondered at it. It was so unusual—in dad. Had he done it purposely? Was there a hidden meaning back of it? He himself had not liked to think of mother, lately; yet, somehow, she seemed always to be in his mind. In spite of himself he was always wondering what she would think of—Helen. But, surely, dad—

With his thoughts in a dizzy whirl of excitement and questionings, Burke thrust his key into the lock and let himself into his own apartment.

The hall—never had it looked so hopelessly cheap and small. Burke, still under the spell of Benton's solicitous ministrations, jerked off his hat and coat and hung them up. Then he strode into the living-room.

Helen, fully dressed, was sitting at the table, reading a magazine.

"Hullo! Sitting up, are you, chicken?" he greeted her, brushing her cheek with his lips. "I told you not to; but maybe it's just as well you did— I might have waked you," he laughed boyishly. "Guess what's happened!"

"Got a raise?" Helen's voice was eager.

Her husband frowned.

"No. I got one last month, you know. I'm getting a hundred now. What more can you expect—in my position?" He spoke coldly, with a tinge of sharpness. He was wondering why Helen always managed to take the zest out of anything he was going to do, or say. Then, with an obvious effort at gayety, he went on: "It's better than a raise, chicken. Dad's invited us to dinner next Sunday—both of us."

"To dinner! Only to dinner?"

"Only to dinner! Great Cæsar, Helen—only to dinner!"

"Well, I can't help it, Burke. It just makes me mad to see you jump and run and be so pleased over just a dinner, when it ought to be for every dinner and all the time; and you know it."

"But, Helen, it isn't the dinner. It's that—that dad cares." The man's voice softened, and became not quite steady. "That maybe he's forgiven me. That he's going to be now the—the old dad that I used to know. Oh, Helen, I've missed him so! I've—"

But his wife interrupted tartly.

"Well, I should think 'twas time he did forgive you—and I'm not saying I think there was anything to forgive, either. There wouldn't have been, if he hadn't tried to interfere with what was our own business—yours and mine."

There was a brief silence. Burke, looking very white and stern, had got to his feet, and was moving restlessly about the room.

"Did you think he was—giving in?" asked Helen at last.

"He was very kind."

"What did you tell him?"

"What do you mean?"

"About the dinner, Sunday."

"I don't know, exactly. I said—something; yes, I think. I meant it for yes—then." The man spoke with sudden utter weariness.

There was another brief silence. A dawning shrewdness was coming into Helen's eyes.

"Oh, of course, yes. We'd want to go," she murmured. "It might mean he was giving in, couldn't it?"

There was no reply.

"Do you think he was giving in?"

Still no reply.

Helen scowled.

"Burke, why in the world don't you answer me?" she demanded crossly. "You were talkative enough a minute ago, when you came in. I should think you might have enough thought of my interests to want us to go to live with your father, if there's any chance of it. And while 'twouldn't be my way to jump the minute he held out his hand, yet if this dinner really means that we'll be going up there to live pretty soon, why—"

"Helen!" Burke had winced visibly, as if from a blow. "Can't you see anything, or talk anything, but our going up there to live? It's enough for me that dad just looked at me to-night with the old look in his eyes; that somehow he's smashed that confounded wall between us; that— But what's the use? Never mind the dinner. We won't go."

"Nonsense, Burke! Don't be silly. Of course—we're going! I wouldn't miss it for the world—under the circumstances." And Helen, with an air of finality, rose to her feet to prepare for bed.

Her husband, looking after her with eyes that were half resigned, half rebellious, for the second time that evening gave a sigh of utter weariness, and turned away.

They went to the dinner. Helen became really very interested and enthusiastic in her preparations for it; and even Burke, after a time, seemed to regain a little of his old eagerness. They had, to be sure, nearly a quarrel over the dress and hat that Helen wished to wear. But after some argument, and not a few tears, she yielded to her husband's none too gently expressed abhorrence of the hat in question (which was a new one), and of the dress—one he had always disliked.

"But I wanted to make a good impression," pouted Helen.

"Exactly! So do I want you to," returned her husband significantly. And there the matter ended.

It was not a success—that dinner. Helen, intent on making her "good impression," very plainly tried to be admiring, entertaining, and solicitous of her host's welfare and happiness. She resulted in being nauseatingly flattering, pert, and inquisitive. John Denby, at first very evidently determined to give no just cause for criticism of his own behavior, was the perfection of courtesy and cordiality. Even when, later, he was unable quite to hide his annoyance at the persistent and assiduous attentions and questions of his daughter-in-law, he was yet courteous, though in unmistakable retreat.

Burke Denby—poor Burke! With every sense and sensitiveness keyed to instant response to each tone and word and gesture of the two before him, each passing minute was, to Burke, but a greater torture than the one preceding it. Long before dinner was over, he wished himself and Helen at home; and as soon as was decently possible after the meal, he peremptorily suggested departure.

"I couldn't stand it! I couldn't stand it another minute," he told himself passionately, as he hurried Helen down the long elm-shaded walk leading to the street. "But dad—dad was a brick! And he asked us to come again. Again! Good Heavens! As if I'd go through that again! It was so much worse there than at home. But I'm glad he didn't put her in mother's chair. I don't think even I could have stood that—to-day!"

"Well, that's over," murmured Helen complacently, as they turned into the public sidewalk,—"and well over! Still, I didn't enjoy myself so very much, and I don't believe you did, either," she laughed, "else you wouldn't have been in such a taking to get away."

There was no answer. Helen, however, evidently sure of her ground, did not seem to notice. She yawned pleasantly.

"Guess I'm sleepy. Ate too much. 'Twas a good dinner; and, just as I told your father, things always taste especially good when you don't get much at home. I said it on purpose. I thought maybe 'twould make him think."

Still silence.

Helen turned sharply and peered into her husband's face.

"What's the matter?" she demanded suspiciously. "Why are you so glum?"

Burke, instantly alert to the danger of having another scene such as had followed Gleason's first visit, desperately ran to cover.

"Nothing, nothing!" He essayed a gay smile, and succeeded. "I'm stupid, that's all. Maybe I'm sleepy myself."

"It can't be you're put out 'cause we came away so early! You suggested it yourself." Her eyes were still suspiciously bent upon him.

"Not a bit of it! I wanted to come."

She relaxed and took her gaze off his face. The unmistakable sincerity in his voice this last time had carried conviction.

"Hm-m; I thought you did," she murmured contentedly again. "Still, I was kind of scared when you proposed it. I didn't suppose 'twas proper to eat and run. Mother always said so. Do you think he minded it—your father?"

"Not a bit!" Burke, in his thankfulness to have escaped the threatened scene, was enabled to speak lightly, almost gayly.

"Hm-m. Well, I'm glad. I wouldn't have wanted him to mind. I tried to be 'specially nice to him, didn't I?"

"You did, certainly." Burke's lips came together a little grimly; but Helen's eyes were turned away; and after a moment's pause she changed the subject—to her husband's infinite relief.

CHAPTER IX

A BOTTLE OF INK

Burke Denby did not attempt to deceive himself after that Sunday dinner. His marriage had been a mistake, and he knew it. He was disappointed, ashamed, and angry. He told himself that he was heartbroken; that he still loved Helen dearly—only he did not like to be with her now. She made him nervous, and rubbed him the wrong way. Her mood never seemed to fit in with his. She had so many little ways—

Sometimes he told himself irritably that he believed that, if it were a big thing like a crime that Helen had committed, he could be heroic and forgiving, and glory in it. But forever to battle against a succession of never-ending irritations, always to encounter the friction of antagonistic aims and ideals—it was maddening. He was ashamed of himself, of course. He was ashamed of lots of things that he said and did. But he could not help an explosion now and then. He felt as if somewhere, within him, was an irresistible force driving him to it.

And the pity of it! Was he not, indeed, to be pitied? What had he not given up? As if it were his fault that he was now so disillusioned! He had supposed that marriage with Helen would be a fresh joy every morning, a new delight every evening, an unbelievable glory of happiness—just being together.

Now—he did not want to be together. He did not want to go home to fretfulness, fault-finding, slovenliness, and perpetual criticism. He wanted to go home to peace and harmony, big, quiet rooms, servants that knew their business, and—dad.

And that was another thing—dad. Dad had been right. He himself had been wrong. But that did not mean that it was easy to own up that he had been wrong. Sometimes he hardly knew which cut the deeper: that he had been proved wrong, thus losing his happiness, or that his father had been proved right, thus placing him in a position to hear the hated "I told you so."

That Helen could never make him happy Burke was convinced now. Never had he realized this so fully as since seeing her at his father's table that Sunday. Never had her "ways" so irritated him. Never had he so poignantly realized the significance of what he had lost—and won. Never had he been so ashamed—or so ashamed because he was ashamed—as on that day. Never, he vowed, would he be placed in the same position again.

As to Helen's side of the matter—Burke quite forgot that there was such a thing. When one is so very sorry for one's self, one forgets to be sorry for anybody else. And Burke was, indeed, very sorry for himself. Having never been in the habit of taking disagreeable medicine, he did not know how to take it now. Having been always accustomed to consider only himself, he considered only himself now. That Helen, too, might be disappointed and disillusioned never occurred to him.

It was perhaps a month later that another invitation to dinner came from John Denby. This time Burke did not stutter out a joyous, incoherent acceptance. He declined so promptly and emphatically that he quite forgot his manners, for the moment, and had to attach to the end of his refusal a hurried and ineffectual "Er—thank you; you are very kind, I'm sure!" He looked up then and met his father's eyes. But instantly his gaze dropped.

"Er—ah—Helen is not well at all, dad," he still further added, nervously. "Of course I'll speak to her. But I don't think we can come."

There was a moment's pause. Then, very gravely, John Denby said: "Oh, I am sorry, son."

Burke, with a sudden tightening of his throat, turned and walked away.

"He didn't laugh, he didn't sneer, he didn't look anyhow, only just plain sorry," choked the young man to himself. "And he had such a magnificent chance to do—all of them. But he just—understood."

Burke "spoke to Helen" that night.

"Father asked us to dinner next Sunday; but—I said I didn't think we could go. I told him you weren't feeling well. I didn't think you'd want to go; and—I didn't want to go myself."

Helen frowned and pouted.

"Well, I've got my opinion of folks who refuse an invitation without even asking 'em if they want to go," she bridled. "Not that I mind much, in this case, though,—if it's just a dinner. I thought once, maybe he meant something—that he was giving in, you know. But I haven't seen any signs of that. And as for just going to dinner—I can't say I am 'specially anxious for that—mean as I feel now."

"No, I thought not," said Burke.

And there the matter ended. As the summer passed, Burke fell into the way of going often to see his father, though never at meal-time. He went alone. Helen said she did not care to go, and that she did not see what fun Burke could find in it, anyway.

To Burke, these hours that he spent with his father chatting and smoking in the dim old library, or on the vine-shaded veranda, were like a breeze blowing across the desert of existence—like water in a thirsty land. From day to day he planned for these visits. From hour to hour he lived upon them.

To all appearances John Denby and his son had picked up their old comradeship exactly where the marriage had severed it. Even to Burke's watchful, sensitive eyes the "wall" seemed quite gone. There was, however, one difference: mother was never mentioned. John Denby never spoke of her now.

There was plenty to talk about. There were all the old interests, and there was business. Burke was giving himself heart and soul to business these days. In July he won another promotion, and was given an advance in wages. Often, to Burke's infinite joy, his father consulted him about matters and things quite beyond his normal position, and showed in other ways his approval of his son's progress. Helen, the marriage, and the Dale Street home life were never mentioned—for which Burke was thankful.

"He couldn't say anything I'd want to hear," said Burke to himself, at times. "And I—I can't say anything he wants to hear. Best forget it—if we can."

To "forget it" seemed, indeed, in these days, to be Burke's aim and effort. Always had Burke tried to forget things. From the day his six-months-old fingers had flung the offending rattle behind him had Burke endeavored to thrust out of sight and mind everything that annoyed—and Helen and marriage had become very annoying. Systematically, therefore, he was trying to forget them. His attitude, indeed, was not unlike that of a small boy who, weary of his game of marbles, cries, "Oh, come, let's play something else. I'm tired of this!"—an attitude which, naturally, was not conducive to happiness, either for himself or for any one else—particularly as the game he was playing was marriage, not marbles.

The summer passed and October came. Life at the Dale Street flat had settled into a monotony of discontent and dreariness. Helen, discouraged, disappointed, and far from well, dragged through the housework day by day, wishing each night that it were morning, and each morning that it were night—a state of mind scarcely conducive to happiness on her part.

For all that Burke was away so many evenings now, Helen was not so lonely as she had been in the spring; for in Mrs. Jones's place had come a new neighbor, Mrs. Cobb. And Mrs. Cobb was even brighter and more original than Mrs. Jones ever was, and Helen liked her very much. She was a mine of information as to housekeeping secrets, and she was teaching Helen how to make the soft and dainty little garments that would be needed in November. But she talked even more loudly than Mrs. Jones had talked; and her laugh was nearly always the first sound that Burke heard across the hall every morning. Moreover, she possessed a phonograph which, according to Helen, played "perfectly grand tunes"; and some one of these tunes was usually the first thing that Burke heard every night when he came home. So he called her coarse and noisy, and declared she was even worse than Mrs. Jones; whereat Helen retorted that of course he wouldn't like her, if she did—which (while possibly true) did not make him like either her or Mrs. Cobb any better.

The baby came in November. It was a little girl. Helen wanted to call her "Vivian Mabelle." She said she thought that was a swell name, and that it was the name of her favorite heroine in a perfectly grand book. But Burke objected strenuously. He declared very emphatically that no daughter of his should have to go through life tagged like a vaudeville fly-by-night.

Of course Helen cried, and of course Burke felt ashamed of himself. Helen's tears had always been a potent weapon—though, from over-use, they were fast losing a measure of their power. The first time he saw her cry, the foundations of the earth sank beneath him, and he dropped into a fathomless abyss from which he thought he would never rise. It was the same the next time, and the next. The fourth time, as he felt the now familiar sensation of sinking down, down, down, he outflung desperate hands and found an unexpected support—his temper. After that it was always with him. It helped to tinge with righteous indignation his despair, and it kept him from utterly melting into weak subserviency. Still, even yet, he was not used to them—his wife's tears. Sometimes he fled from them; sometimes he endured them in dumb despair behind set teeth; sometimes he raved and ranted in a way he was always ashamed of afterwards. But still they had the power, in a measure, to make his heart like water within him.

So now, about the baby's name, he called himself a brute and a beast to bring tears to the eyes of the little mother—toward whom, since the baby's advent, he felt a remorseful tenderness. But he still maintained that he could have no man, or woman, call his daughter "Vivian Mabelle."

"But I should think you'd let me name my own baby," wailed his wife.

Burke choked back a hasty word and assumed his pet "I'll-be-patient-if-it-kills-me" air.

"And you shall name it," he soothed her. "Listen! Here are pencil and paper. Now, write down a whole lot of names that you'd like, and I'll promise to select one of them. Then you'll be naming the baby all right. See?"

Helen did not "see," quite, that she would be naming the baby; but, knowing from past experience of her husband's temper that resistance would be unpleasant, she obediently took the paper and spent some time writing down a list of names.

Burke frowned a good deal when he saw the list, and declared that it was pretty poor pickings, and that he ought to have known better than to have bound himself to a silly-fool promise like that. But he chose a name (he said he would keep his word, of course), and he selected "Dorothy Elizabeth" as being less impossible than its accompanying "Veras," "Violets," and "Clarissa Muriels."

For the first few months after the baby's advent, Burke spent much more time at home, and seemed very evidently to be trying to pay especial attention to his wife's comfort and welfare. He was proud of the baby, and declared it was the cutest little kid going. He poked it in its ribs, thrust a tentative finger into the rose-leaf of a hand (emitting a triumphant chuckle of delight when the rose-leaf became a tightly clutching little fist), and even allowed the baby to be placed one or twice in his rather reluctant and fearful arms. But, for the most part, he contented himself with merely looking at it, and asking how soon it would walk and talk, and when would it grow its teeth and hair.

Burke was feeling really quite keenly these days the solemnity and responsibility of fatherhood. He had called into being a new soul. A little life was in his hands to train. By and by this tiny pink roll of humanity would be a prattling child, a little girl, a young lady. And all the way she would be turning to him for companionship and guidance. It behooved him, indeed, to look well to himself, that he should be in all ways a fit pattern.

It was a solemn thought. No more tempers, tantrums, and impatience. No more idle repinings and useless regrets. What mattered it if he were disillusioned and heartsick? Did he want this child of his, this beautiful daughter, to grow up in such an atmosphere? Never! At once, therefore, he must begin to cultivate patience, contentment, tranquillity, and calmness of soul. He, the pattern, must be all things that he would wish her to be.

And how delightful it would be when she was old enough to meet him on his own ground—to be a companion for him, the companion he had not found in his wife! She would be pretty, of course, sweet-tempered, and cheerful. (Was he not to train her himself?) She would be capable and sensible, too. He would see to that. To no man, in the future, should she bring the tragedy of disillusionment that her mother had brought to him. No, indeed! For that matter, however, he should not let her marry any one for a long time. He should keep her himself. Perhaps he would not let her marry at all. He did not think much of this marriage business, anyway. Not that he was going to show that feeling any longer now, of course. From now on he was to show only calm contentment and tranquillity of soul, no matter what the circumstances. Was he not a father? Had he not, in the hollow of his hand, a precious young life to train?

Again all this was very well in theory. But in practice—

Dorothy Elizabeth was not six months old before the young father discovered that parenthood changed conditions, not people. He felt just as irritated at the way Helen buttered a whole slice of bread at a time, and said "swell" and "you was," as before; just as impatient because he could not buy what he wanted; just as annoyed at the purple cushion on the red sofa.

He was surprised and disappointed. He told himself that he had supposed that when a fellow made good resolutions, he was given some show of a chance to keep them. But as if any one could cultivate calm contentment and tranquillity of soul as he was situated!

First, there were not only all his old disappointments and annoyances to contend with, but a multitude of new ones. It was as if, indeed, each particular torment had taken unto itself wife and children, so numerous had they become. There was really now no peace at home. There was nothing but the baby. He had not supposed that any one thing or person could so monopolize everything and everybody.

When the baby was awake, Helen acted as if she thought the earth swung on its axis solely to amuse it. When it slept, she seemed to think the earth ought to stand still—lest it wake Baby up. With the same wholesale tyranny she marshaled into line everything and everybody on the earth, plainly regarding nothing and no one as of consequence, except in its relationship to Baby.

Such unimportant things as meals and housework, in comparison with Baby, were of even less than second consequence; and Burke grew to feel himself more and more an alien and a nuisance in his own home. Moreover, where before he had found disorder and untidiness, he now found positive chaos. And however fond he was of the Baby, he grew unutterably weary of searching for his belongings among Baby's rattles, balls, shirts, socks, milk bottles, blankets, and powder-puffs.

The "cool, calm serenity" of his determination he found it difficult to realize; and the delights and responsibilities of fatherhood began to pall upon him. It looked to be so long a way ahead, even to teeth, talking, and walking, to say nothing of the charm and companionship of a young lady daughter!

Children were all very well, of course,—very desirable. But did they never do anything but cry? Couldn't they be taught that nights were for sleep, and that other people in the house had some rights besides themselves? And must they always choose four o'clock in the morning for a fit of the colic? Helen said it was colic. For his part, he believed it was nothing more or less than temper—plain, right-down temper!

And so it went. Another winter passed, and spring came. Matters were no better, but rather worse. A series of incompetent maids had been adding considerably to the expense—and little to the comfort—of the household. Helen, as a mistress, was not a success. She understood neither her own duties nor those of the maid—which resulted in short periods of poor service and frequent changes.

July came with its stifling heat, and Dorothy Elizabeth, now twenty months old, showed a daily increasing disapproval of life in general and of her own existence in particular. Helen, worn and worried, and half sick from care and loss of sleep, grew day by day more fretful, more difficult to get along with. Burke, also half sick from loss of sleep, and consumed with a fierce, inward rebellion against everything and everybody, including himself, was no less difficult to get along with.

Of course this state of affairs could not continue forever. The tension had to snap sometime. And it snapped—over a bottle of ink in a baby's hand.

It happened on Bridget's "afternoon out," when Helen was alone with the baby. Dorothy Elizabeth, propped up in her high-chair beside the dining-room table, where her mother was writing a letter, reached covetous hands toward the fascinating little fat black bottle. The next instant a wild shout of glee and an inky tide surging from an upside-down bottle, held high above a golden head, told that the quest had been successful.

Things happened then very fast. There were a dismayed cry from Helen, half a-dozen angry spats on a tiny hand, a series of shrieks from Dorothy Elizabeth, and a rapidly spreading inky pall over baby, dress, table, rug, and Helen's new frock.

At that moment Burke appeared in the door.

With wrathful eyes he swept the scene before him, losing not one detail of scolding woman, shrieking child, dinnerless table, and inky chaos. Then he strode into the room.

"Well, by George!" he snapped. "Nice restful place for a tired man to come to, isn't it? This is your idea of a happy home, I suppose!"

The overwrought wife and mother, with every nerve tingling, turned sharply.

"Oh, yes, that's right—blame me! Blame me for everything! Maybe you think I think this is a happy, restful place, too! Maybe you think this is what I thought 'twould be—being married to you! But I can tell you it just isn't! Maybe you think I ain't tired of working and pinching and slaving, and never having any fun, and being scolded and blamed all the time because I don't eat and walk and stand up and sit down the way you want me to, and— Where are you goin'?" she broke off, as her husband reached for the hat he had just tossed aside, and started for the door.

Burke turned quietly. His face was very white.

"I'm going down to the square to get something to eat. Then I'm going up to father's. And—you needn't sit up for me. I shall stay all night."

"All—night!"

"Yes. I'd like to sleep—for once. And that's what I can't do—here." The next moment the door had banged behind him.

Helen, left alone with the baby, fell back limply.

"Why, Baby, he—he—" Then she caught the little ink-stained figure to her and began to cry convulsively.

In the street outside Burke strode along with his head high and his jaw sternly set. He was very angry. He told himself that he had a right to be angry. Surely a man was entitled to some consideration!

In spite of it all, however, there was, in a far-away corner of his soul, an uneasy consciousness of a tiny voice of scorn dubbing this running away of his the act of a coward and a cad.

Very resolutely, however, he silenced this voice by recounting again to himself how really abused he was. It was a long story. It served to occupy his mind all through the unappetizing meal he tried to eat at the cheap restaurant before climbing Elm Hill.

His father greeted him cordially, and with no surprise in voice or manner—which was what Burke had expected, inasmuch as he had again fallen into the way of spending frequent evenings at the old home. To-night, however, Burke himself was constrained and ill at ease. His jaw was still firmly set and his head was still high; but his heart was beginning to fail him, and his mind was full of questionings.

How would his father take it—this proposition to stay all night? He would understand something of what it meant. He could not help but understand. But what would he say? How would he act? Would he say in actions, if not in words, that dreaded "I told you so"? Would it unseal his lips on a subject so long tabooed, and set him into a lengthy dissertation on the foolishness of his son's marriage? Burke believed that, as he felt now, he could not stand that; but he could stand less easily going back to the Dale Street flat that night. He could go to a hotel, of course. But he did not want to do that. He wanted dad. But he did not want dad—to talk.

"How's the baby?" asked John Denby, as Burke dropped himself into a chair on the cool, quiet veranda. "I thought she was not looking very well the last time Helen wheeled her up here." Always John Denby's first inquiry now was for his little granddaughter.

"Eh? The baby? Oh, she—she's all right. That is"—Burke paused for a short laugh—"she's well."

John Denby took his cigar from his lips and turned sharply.

"But she's not—all right?"

Burke laughed again.

"Oh, yes, she's all right, too, I suppose," he retorted, a bit grimly. "But she was—er—humph! Well, I'll tell you." And he gave a graphic description of his return home that night.

"Jove, what a mess!—and ink, too," ejaculated John Denby, with more than a tinge of sympathy in his voice. "How'd she ever manage to clean it up?"

Burke shrugged his shoulders.

"Ask me something easy. I don't know, I'm sure. I cleared out."

"Without—your dinner?" John Denby asked the question after a very brief, but very tense, silence.

"My dinner—I got in the square."

Burke's lips snapped together again tight shut. John Denby said nothing. His eyes were gravely fixed on the glowing tip of the cigar in his hand.

Burke cleared his throat and hesitated. He had not intended to ask his question quite so soon; but suddenly he was consumed with an overwhelming desire to speak out and get it over. He cleared his throat again.

"Dad—would you mind—my sleeping here to-night? It's just that I—I want a good night's sleep, for once," he plunged on hurriedly, in answer to a swift something that he saw leap to his father's eyes. "And I can't get it there—with the baby and all."

There was a perceptible pause. Then, steadily, and with easy cordiality, came John Denby's reply.

"Why, certainly, my boy. I'm glad to have you. I'll ring at once for Benton to see that—that your old room is made ready for you," he added, touching a push-button near his chair.

Later, when Benton had come and gone, with his kindly old face alight and eager, Burke braced himself for what he thought was inevitable. Something would come, of course. The only question was, what would it be?

But nothing came—that is, nothing in the nature of what Burke had expected. John Denby, after Benton had left the veranda, turned to his son with a pleasantly casual—

"Oh, Brett was saying to-day that the K. & O. people had granted us an extension of time on that bridge contract."

"Er—yes," plunged in Burke warmly. And with the words, every taut nerve and muscle in his body relaxed as if cut in twain.

It came later, though, when he had ceased to look for it. It came just as he was thinking of saying good-night.

"It has occurred to me, son," broached John Denby, after a short pause, "that Helen may be tired and in sore need of a rest."

Burke caught his breath, and held it a moment suspended. When before had his father mentioned Helen, save to speak of her casually in connection with the baby?

"Er—er—y-yes, very likely," he stammered, a sudden vision coming to him of Helen as he had seen her on the floor in the midst of the inky chaos a short time before.

"You're not the only one that isn't finding the present state of affairs a—a bed of roses, Burke," said John Denby then.

"Er—ah—n-no," muttered the amazed husband. In his ears now rang Helen's—"Maybe you think I ain't tired of working and pinching and slaving!" Involuntarily he shivered and glanced at his father—dad could not, of course, have heard!

"I have a plan to propose," announced John Denby quietly, after a moment's silence. "As I said, I think Helen needs a rest—and a change. I've seen quite a little of her since the baby came, you know, and I've noticed—many things. I will send her a check for ten thousand dollars to-morrow if she will take the baby and go away for a time—say, to her old home for a visit. But there is one other condition," he continued, lifting a quick hand to silence Burke's excited interruption. "I need a rest and change myself. I should like to go to Alaska again; and I'd like to have you go with me. Will you go?"

Burke sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down the wide veranda. (From boyhood Burke had always "thrashed things out" on his feet.) For a full minute now he said nothing. Then, abruptly, he stopped and wheeled about. His face was very white.

"Dad, I can't. It seems too much like—like—"

"No, it isn't in the least like quitting, or running away," supplied John Denby, reading unerringly his son's hesitation. "You're not quitting at all. I'm asking you to go. Indeed, I'm begging you to go, Burke. I want you. I need you. I'm not an old man, I know; but I feel like one. These last two years have not been—er—a bed of roses for me, either." In spite of a certain lightness in his words, the man's voice shook a little. "I don't think you know, boy, how your old dad has—missed you."

"Don't I? I can—guess." Burke wheeled and resumed his nervous stride. The words, as he flung them out, were at once a challenge and an admission. "But—Helen—" He stopped short, waiting.

"I've answered that. I've told you. Helen needs a rest and a change."

Again to the distraught husband's ears came the echo of a woman's wailing—"Maybe you think I ain't tired of working and pinching and slaving—"

"Then you don't think Helen will feel that I'm running away?" A growing hope was in his eyes, but his brow still carried its frown of doubt.

"Not if she has a check for—ten thousand dollars," replied John Denby, a bit grimly.

Burke winced. A painful red reached his forehead.

"It is, indeed, a large sum, sir,—too large," he resented, with sudden stiffness. "Thank you; but I'm afraid we can't accept it, after all."

John Denby saw his mistake at once; but he did not make the second mistake of showing it.

"Nonsense!" he laughed lightly, with no sign of the sudden panic of fear within him lest the look on his son's face meant the downfall of all his plans. "I made it large purposely. Remember, I'm borrowing her husband for a season; and she needs some recompense! Besides, it'll mean a playday for herself. You'll not be so unjust to Helen as to refuse her the means to enjoy that!—not that she'll spend it all for that, of course. But it will be a comfortable feeling to know that she has it."

"Y-yes, of course," hesitated Burke, still frowning.

"Then we'll call that settled."

"I know; but— Of course if you put it that way, why, I—"

"Well, I do put it just that way," nodded the father lightly. "Now, let's go in. I've got some maps and time-tables I want you to see. I'm planning a different route from the one we took with the doctor—a better one, I think. But let's see what you say. Come!" And he led the way to the library.

Burke's head came up alertly. His shoulders lost their droop and his brow its frown. A new light flamed into his eyes and a new springiness leaped into his step. Always, from the time his two-year-old lips had begged to "see the wheels go 'round," had Burke's chief passion and delight been traveling. As he bent now over the maps and time-tables that his father spread before him, voice and hands fairly trembled with eagerness. Then suddenly a chance word sent him to his feet again, the old look of despair on his face.

"Dad, I can't," he choked. "I can't be a quitter. You don't want me to be!"

JOHN DENBY WENT STRAIGHT TO HIS SON AND LAID BOTH HANDS ON HIS SHOULDERS

With a sharp word John Denby, too, leaped to his feet. Something of the dogged persistence that had won for him wealth and power glowed in his eyes as he went straight to his son and laid both hands on his shoulders.

"Burke, I had not meant to say this," he began quietly; "but perhaps it's just as well that I do. Possibly you think I've been blind all these past months; but I haven't. I've seen—a good deal. Now I want you and Helen to be happy. I don't want to see your life—or hers—wrecked. I believe there's a chance yet for you two people to travel together with some measure of peace and comfort, and I'm trying to give you that chance. There's just one thing to do, I believe, and that is—to be away from each other for a while. You both need it. For weeks I've been planning and scheming how it could be done. How do you suppose I happened to have this Alaska trip all cut and dried even down to the train and boat schedules, if I hadn't done some thinking? To-night came my chance. So I spoke."

"But—to be a quitter!"

"You're not quitting. You're—stopping to get your breath."

"There's—my work."

"You've made good, and more than good there, son. I've been proud of you—every inch of the way. You're no quitter there."

"Thanks, dad!" Only the sudden mist in his eyes and the shake in his voice showed how really moved Burke was. "But—Helen," he stammered then.

"Will be better off without you—for a time."

"And—I?"

"Will be better off without her—for the same time. While I—shall be, oh, so infinitely better off with you. Ah, son, but I've missed you so!" It was the same longing cry that had gone straight to Burke's heart a few minutes before. "You'll come?"

There was a tense silence. Burke's face plainly showed the struggle within him. A moment more, and he spoke.

"Dad, I'll have to think it out," he temporized brokenly. "I'll let you know in the morning."

"Good!" If John Denby was disappointed, he did not show it. "We'll let it go till morning, then. Meanwhile, it can do no harm to look at these, however," he smiled, with a wave of his hand toward the maps and time-tables.

"No, of course not," acquiesced Burke promptly, relieved that his father agreed so willingly to the delay.

Half an hour later he went upstairs to his old room to bed.

It was a fine old room. He had forgotten that a bedroom could be so large—and so convenient. Benton, plainly, had been there. Also, plainly, his hand had not lost its cunning, nor his brain the memory of how Master Burke "liked things."

The arrangement of the lights, the glass of milk by his bed, the turned-down spread and sheet, the latest magazine ready to his hand—even the size and number of towels in his bathroom testified to Benton's loving hand and good memory.

With a sigh that was almost a sob Burke dropped himself into a chair and looked about him.

It was all so peaceful, so restful, so comfortable. And it was so quiet. He had forgotten that a room could be so quiet.

In spite of his weariness, Burke's preparations for bed were both lengthy and luxurious—he had forgotten what absolute content lay in plenty of space, towels, and hot water, to say nothing of soap that was in its proper place, and did not have to be fished out of a baby-basket or a kitchen sink.

Burke did not intend to go to sleep at once. He intended first to settle in his mind what he would do with this proposition of his father's. He would have to refuse it, of course. It would not do. Still, he ought to give it proper consideration for dad's sake. That much was due dad.

He stretched himself luxuriously on the bed (he had forgotten that a bed could be so soft and so "just right") and began to think. But the next thing he knew he was waking up.

His first feeling was a half-unconscious but delightful sensation of physical comfort. His next a dazed surprise as his slowly opened eyes encountered shapes and shadows and arc-light beams on the walls and ceiling quite unlike those in his Dale Street bedroom. Then instantly came a vague but poignant impression that "something had happened," followed almost as quickly by full realization.

Like a panorama, then, the preceding evening lay before him: Helen, the crying baby, the trailing ink, the angry words, the flight, dad, his welcome, the pleasant chat, the remarkable proposition. Oh, yes! And it was of the proposition that he was going to think. He could not accept it, of course, but—

What a trump dad had been to offer it! What a trump he had been in the way he offered it, too! What a trump he had been all through about it, for that matter. Not a word of reproach, not a hint of patronage. Not even a look that could be construed into that hated "I told you so." Just a straight-forward offer of this check for Helen, and the trip for himself, and actually in a casual, matter-of-fact tone of voice as if ten-thousand-dollar checks and Alaskan trips were everyday occurrences.

But they weren't! A trip like that did not drop into a man's plate every day. Of course he could not take it—but what a dandy one it would be! And with dad—!

For that matter, dad really needed him. Dad ought not to go off like that alone, and so far. Besides, dad wanted him. How his voice had trembled when he had said, "I don't think you know, boy, how your old dad has missed you"! As if he didn't, indeed! As if he hadn't done some missing on his own account!

And the check. Of course he could not let Helen accept that, either,—ten thousand dollars! But how generous of dad to offer it—and of course it would be good for Helen. Poor Helen! She needed a rest, all right, and she deserved one. It would be fine for her to go back to her old home town for a little while, and no mistake. Not that she would need to spend the whole ten thousand dollars on that, of course. But even a little slice of a sum like that would give her all the frills and furbelows she wanted for herself and the baby, and send them into the country for all the rest of the summer, besides leaving nine-tenths of it for a nest-egg for the future. And what a comfortable feeling it would give her—always a little money when she wanted it for anything! No more of the hated pinching and starving, for he should tell her to spend it and take some comfort with it. That was what it was for. Besides, when it was gone, he would have some for her. What a boon it would be to her—that ten thousand dollars! Of course, looking at it in that light, it was almost his duty to accept the proposition, and give her the chance to have it.

But then, after all, he couldn't. Why, it was like accepting charity; he hadn't earned it. Still, if hard work and anguish of mind counted, he had earned it twice over, slaving away at the beck of Brett and his minions. And he had made good—so far. Dad had said so. What a trump dad was to speak as he did! And when dad said a thing like that, it meant something!

Well, there was nothing to do, of course, but to go back and buckle down to work—and to life in the Dale Street flat. To be sure, there was the baby. Of course he was fond of the baby; and it was highly interesting to see her achieve teeth, hair, a backbone, and sense—if only she would hurry up a little faster, though. Did babies always take so long to grow up?

Burke stretched himself luxuriously and gazed about the room. The arc-light outside had gone out and dawn was approaching. More and more distinctly each loved object in the room was coming into view. To his nostrils came the perfume of the roses and honeysuckles in the garden below his window. To his ears came the chirp and twitter of the bird-calls from the trees. Over his senses stole the soothing peace of absolute physical ease.

Once more, drowsily, he went back to his father's offer. Once more, in his mind, he argued it—but this time with a difference. Thus, so potent, sometimes, is the song of a bird, the scent of a flower, the shape of a loved, familiar object, or even the feel of a soft bed beneath one.

After all, might he not be making a serious mistake if he did not accede to his father's wishes? Of course, so far as he, personally, was concerned, the answer would be an unequivocal refusal of the offer. But there was his father to consider, and there was Helen to think of; yes, and the baby. How much better it would be for them—for all of them, if he accepted it!

Helen and the baby could have months of fresh air, ease, and happiness without delay, to say nothing of innumerable advantages later. Why, when you came to think of it, that would be enough, if there were nothing else! But there was something else. There was dad. Good old dad! How happy he'd be! Besides, dad really needed him. How ever had he thought for a moment of sending dad off to Alaska alone, and just after an illness, too! What could he be thinking of to consider it for a moment? That settled it. He should go. He would stifle all silly feelings of pride and the like, and he would make dad, Helen, and the baby happy.

Which question having been satisfactorily decided, Burke turned over and settled himself for a doze before breakfast. He did not get it, however. His mind was altogether too full of time-tables, boat schedules, mountain peaks, and forest trails.

Jove, but that was going to be a dandy trip!

It was later, while Burke was leisurely dressing and planning out the day before him, that the bothersome question came to him as to how he should tell Helen. He was reminded, also, emphatically, of the probable scene in store for him when he should go home at six o'clock that night. And he hated scenes. For that matter, there would probably be another one, too, when he told her that he was going away for a time. To be sure, there was the ten-thousand-dollar check; and of course very soon he could convince her that it was really all for her best happiness. After she gave it a little thought, it would be all right, he was positive, but there was certain to be some unpleasantness at first, particularly as she was sure to be not a little difficult over his running—er—rather, going away the night before. And he wished he could avoid it in some way. If only he did not have to go home—

His face cleared suddenly. Why, of course! He would write. How stupid of him not to have thought of it before! He could say, then, just what he wanted to say, and she would have a chance to think it over calmly and sensibly, and see how really fine it was for her and the baby. That was the way to do it, and the only way. Writing, he could not be unnerved by her tears (of course she would cry at first—she always cried!) or exasperated into saying things he would be sorry for afterwards. He could say just enough, and not too much, in a letter, and say it right. Then, early in the following week, just before he was to start on his trip he would go down to the Dale Street house and spend the last two or three days with Helen and the baby, picking up his traps, and planning with Helen some of the delightful things she could do with that ten thousand dollars. By that time she would, of course, have entirely come around to his point of view (even if she had not seen it quite that way at first), and they could have a few really happy days together—something which would be quite impossible if they should meet now, with the preceding evening fresh in their minds, and have one of their usual wretched scenes of tears, recriminations, and wranglings.