arding house. She leased an old four-story
residence on West Fourteenth Street, and, furnishing it as neatly as
possible with the capital at her disposal, she hung out her shingle.
Lodgers knocked at the door to inquire, were attracted by the clean
rooms, and remained for years. It was hard work catering for the table
and looking after the wants of the guests, but Mrs. Parkes toiled
uncomplainingly. It would not be forever, she promised herself. When her
boy grew up, she could take a rest. He would provide for everything, and
they would no longer be under the necessity of taking boarders.

Her boy was Mrs. Parkes' one weakness. There were just three things in
which she took special pride--cleanliness of her house, the
respectability of her boarders, and her son Harry. Not that there
existed any good reason for feeling particular satisfaction over her
offspring. Harry grew up as other boys do, but his earning capacity did
not grow with him. Like other boys who are made too comfortable at
home, he saw no necessity to exert himself, and at the age of thirty he
was still living at home, more of a hindrance than a help in the
domestic economy, his usefulness being limited to doing odd jobs around
the house and keeping tab on the lodgers' accounts. Recently he had
found employment in an architect's office, and then he became
intolerable. There was nothing that he could not do; no heights to which
he could not climb. A good deal of a _poseur_ he wore gold-rimmed
glasses, aped the absent-minded manner of the student, and spoke in
vague terms of big things he was about to accomplish. That nothing came
of them surprised nobody but his credulous and indulgent mother, who
lived on year after year in the blissful conviction that one day Harry
would astonish the world. If she had any secret worries about her son at
all, it was that he might commit some folly with the other sex and marry
below his station. Mrs. Parkes was only a boarding house keeper, but she
was proud. She did not forget the fact that on her maternal side she was
descended from one of the best families in the South. Not that she had
any cause to complain of Harry in this respect, but she recalled certain
anxieties which her dead husband had caused her in this respect, and she
sometimes feared that her son might have inherited some of the paternal
traits. For this reason alone she was glad Hilda was leaving. There was
no telling what mischief might happen with such a b