rch, and
until eleven she rode in the park. At twelve she lunched with Page, and
in the afternoon--in the "upstairs sitting-room" read her Browning or
her Meredith, the latter one of her newest discoveries, till three or
four. Sometimes after that she went out in her carriage. If it was to
"shop" she drove to the "Rookery," in La Salle Street, after her
purchases were made, and sent the footman up to her husband's office to
say that she would take him home. Or as often as not she called for
Mrs. Cressler or Aunt Wess' or Mrs. Gretry, and carried them off to
some exhibit of painting, or flowers, or more rarely--for she had not
the least interest in social affairs--to teas or receptions.

But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband to herself. Page
was almost invariably occupied by one or more of her young men in the
drawing-room, but Laura and Jadwin shut themselves in the library, a
lofty panelled room--a place of deep leather chairs, tall bookcases,
etchings, and sombre brasses--and there, while Jadwin lay stretched out
upon the broad sofa, smoking cigars, one hand behind his head, Laura
read aloud to him.

His tastes in fiction were very positive. Laura at first had tried to
introduce him to her beloved Meredith. But after three chapters, when
he had exclaimed, "What's the fool talking about?" she had given over
and begun again from another starting-point. Left to himself, his wife
sorrowfully admitted that he would have gravitated to the "Mysterious
Island" and "Michael Strogoff," or even to "Mr. Potter of Texas" and
"Mr. Barnes of New York." But she had set herself to accomplish his
literary education, so, Meredith failing, she took up "Treasure Island"
and "The Wrecker." Much of these he made her skip.

"Oh, let's get on with the 'story,'" he urged. But Pinkerton for long
remained for him an ideal, because he was "smart" and "alive."

"I'm not long very many of art," he announced. "But I believe that any
art that don't make the world better and happier is no art at all, and
is only fit for the dump heap."

But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in Howells.

"Nothing much happens," he said. "But I know all those people." He
never could rid himself of a surreptitious admiration for Bartley
Hubbard. He, too, was "smart" and "alive." He had the "get there" to
him. "Why," he would say, "I know fifty boys just like him down there
in La Salle Street." Lapham he loved as a brother. Never a point in t