d themselves once more in Middleton at the Four
Corners.

II

Good people, people of fortunes nicely won and carefully transmitted,
well-known people, in short the members of society who make life an
important affair to be honorably transacted in due reverence for their
own reputation and the opinion of their neighbors, had nothing more to
do with the family. They were blotted out of the blue book of Boston
and never ventured beyond the shady walks of the Common on the Beacon
Street side. In the other world, about the exchange, in the bar-rooms
and restaurants of the downtown hotels, John Ellwell still led a
comfortable life. The Board liked him. His transactions never again
assumed large proportions, but in the way of little things he did a
brisk business and went his old, corrupt, uncertain path.

The old house at Middleton was pulled to pieces and made fit for a
gentleman's family, with a comfortable dining-room and broad-bayed
windows, fine mahogany from the Beacon Street house, and an opulent
cellar. Wide verandas were run about the house again, giving
delightful vine-covered nooks for talk and sewing in the hazy, heated
summer days. The lawn was nicely shaved and watered; the drive that
led through the orchard to the cross-roads which gave the name to the
place was weeded and gravelled. A new stable was put up behind, and
furnished with three horses, some smart little carts, besides a close
carriage for rainy days. The exile was made tolerable--for the sake of
the children.

Mrs. John Ellwell counted for little. She had married in romance the
handsome, swell young man; reality had blasted her. She had sunk into
a will-less invalid, and made admiration of her husband into pride and
a religion. She had accepted; she never protested. The eldest son by
the dint of much pushing had been put into Camberton just before the
final smash and the exile. In the hall of the college there hung a
portrait of his great grandfather in his black preacher's robes; of
this, Roper Ellwell, second, was a weak travesty. The thin features
had been blurred in the process of transmitting; an inclination to
flabby stoutness of person made the young man portly, where the old
minister had been nervously fragile. But Roper Ellwell, second, rarely
compared notes, for he dined, not in hall under this picture, but at a
private club with his own set.

These young fellows drove over now and then to the Four Corners, a
pleasant place