as
being listed and stamped. And at the little desk in the corner, his
gloves and stick beside him on the floor, sat Absolom Vail, the
hardware king, in a pepper-and-salt suit.

"I brought my nephew up with me and thought I'd look in for another
little chat, Mr. Vail," I said. The housekeeper lifted her
unfathomable eyes to mine for a moment, then dropped them.

"Six dozen snow-drop twenty-eight inch breakfast napkins," she said
quietly, but my mind received--I cannot explain how--a totally
different impression from what the sound of these words conveyed.
Afterward, I realized that I thought suddenly of the sea, great clouds,
unheard of, enormous fish, and myself driving like the wind across
high, tumbling waves ... it was extraordinary. I had been literally
lost in her eyes.

"Always glad to see the doctor's friends," he chirped, and soon, as
Will had said, he was talking.

It was all very simple--simple and pathetic and typical enough. The
hall bedroom, the rising clerk, the new branch in Kansas City, the
young, fresh wife, the little story-and-a-half frame house, the bigger
one on a better street, the partnership, the two daughters, the private
school, the invention of the new time-lock, the great factory, the
Trust, the vice-presidency, the clear head in the panic, the board of
directors, the mass of capital, the amazing power.

"And of course we brought the girls up very different from what we'd
had."

"Of course."

The old epic of America; the wonderful, cruel destiny of its sons and
daughters ... I seemed to see them, climbing, climbing, their dainty
feet on the bent, grey heads of the human stairway love had built and
thrift had mortared and habit had hardened there!

"It was all right while mother was with us," he went on. "I used to
get home late after one of those big dinners, and she'd be sitting up
and warm me a little soup or something on the alcohol lamp (she'd never
touch electricity, mother wouldn't) and I'd get my coat off and sit
awhile; she'd send the servants to bed. Minnie never liked that, but
while mother lived, Minnie didn't have so much say. Not but that
Minnie wasn't a good girl and a good daughter, for a minute, mind you!
Wasn't she?"

He turned to his old housekeeper.

"Miss Vail had a very fine mind," she said quietly, "a great deal of
faculty."

"That's it--faculty," he repeated contentedly. "But Irene was easier
to get along with. A good deal easier. You said you