th in their best
clothes; my father in the buckled shoes and the frilled shirt that I had
never seen him wear before, my mother with the Indian shawl about her
shoulders, and upon her head the cap of ceremony that reposed three
hundred and sixty days out of the year in its round wicker-work nest
lined with silk. They started guiltily as I pushed open the door, but I
congratulate myself that I had sense enough--or was it instinct--to ask
no questions.

The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged,
the lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows,
my father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the change
not only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing, and even
in their very voices. My father brought over from the sideboard the
sherry and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a glass to my
mother, and he and my mother drank to each other, while I between them
ate the biscuits, and the conversation was of Byron's poems and the
great glass palace in Hyde Park.

I wonder am I disloyal setting this down? Maybe to others it shows but
a foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention. I dwell
upon such trifles because to me the memory of them is very tender. The
virtues of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis but what we
expected of them: how could they do otherwise? Their failings we would
forget; no one of us is perfect. But over their follies we love to
linger, smiling.

To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon
made perhaps more difference than to any one else. My father now was
busy all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of
the giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every day
more social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left much to
my own resources.

Rambling--"bummelling," as the Germans term it--was my bent. This my
mother would have checked, but my father said:

"Don't molly-coddle him. Let him learn to be smart."

"I don't think the smart people are always the nicest," demurred my
mother. "I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke."

My father appeared surprised, but reflected.

"I should call myself smart--in a sense," he explained, after
consideration.

"Perhaps you are right, dear," replied my mother; "and of course boys
are different from girls."

Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded by
many small