inions, but ambitions." She saw Grace stiffen, and Howard's warning
glance at her. But she saw, too, the look in her mother's eyes,
infinitely loving and compassionate. "Dear little mother," she thought,
"he is her baby, really. Not I."

She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be for a
woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if
it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also
conscious of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's
tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across
from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and
faintly smiling.

"It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other than
graft," said Howard. "I am going to run for mayor, Lily. I probably
won't get it."

"You can see," said old Anthony, "why I am interested in your views, or
perhaps I should say, in Willy Cameron's. Does your father's passion for
uplift, for instance, extend to you?"

"Why won't you be elected, father?"

"Partly because my name is Cardew."

Old Anthony chuckled.

"What!" he exclaimed, "after the bath-house and gymnasium you have built
at the mill? And the laundries for the women--which I believe they
do not use. Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the dear people of
ingratitude?"

"They are beginning to use them, sir." Howard, in his forties, still
addressed his father as "Sir!"

"Then you admit your defeat beforehand."

"You are rather a formidable antagonist."

"Antagonist!" Anthony repeated in mock protest. "I am a quiet onlooker
at the game. I am amused, naturally. You must understand," he said
to Lily, "that this is a matter of a principle with your father. He
believes that he should serve. My whole contention is that the people
don't want to be served. They want to be bossed. They like it; it's all
they know. And they're suspicious of a man who puts his hand into his
own pocket instead of into theirs."

He smiled and sipped his wine.

"Good wine, this," he observed. "I'm buying all I can lay my hands on,
against the approaching drought."

Lily's old distrust of her grandfather revived. Why did people sharpen
like that with age? Age should be mellow, like old wine. And--what was
she going to do with herself? Already the atmosphere of the house began
to depress and worry her; she felt a new, almost violent impatience with
it. It was so unnecessary.

She went to t