ob pipe from his
pocket and was looking at it speculatively.

"Well, now, if that's the case, I reckon I can go down to Hargis's and
buy me a new pipe, Buddy; and I--I'll be switched if I don't do it right
now."

And in such gladsome easing of the strain were the wheels of Chiawassee
Consolidated oiled to their new whirlings on the road to fortune. If
Caleb Gordon remembered how the miracle had been wrought, he said no
word to clench his disapproval; and as for Tom--ah, well; it was not the
first time in the history of the race that the end has served to justify
the means--to make them clean and white and spotless, if need were.

XXII

LOVE

If Tom Gordon could have known how slightly the Dabney's European plans
coincided with those of the Farleys, he might have had fewer
heartburnings in those intervals when the harassing struggle for
industrial existence gave him time to think of Ardea.

As a strict matter of fact, the voyage across, and some little
guide-book touring of England, were the sum total of coincidence. On
leaving London the Farleys set out on the grand tour which was to land
them in Naples for the winter, while the Dabneys went directly to Paris
and to a modest pension in the Rue Cambon to spend the European holiday
in a manner better befitting the purse of a country gentleman.

So it befell that by the time Miss Eva Farley was rhapsodizing over the
Rhine castles in twenty-page letters, boring Ardea a little, if the
truth must be told, the Dabneys had settled down to their quiet life in
the French capital. Ardea was anxious to do something with her music
under a Parisian master--and was doing it. The Major found melancholy
pleasure in reviewing at large the city of his son's long exile; and
Miss Euphrasia came and went with one or the other of her cousins, as
the exigencies of chaperonage or companionship constrained her.

In such moderate pleasuring the French summer began for the Major and
his charges; so it continued, and so it ended; and late in September
they began to talk about going home.

"We really mean it this time," wrote Ardea in a letter to Martha Gordon.
"I confess we are all a little homesick for America, and Paradise, and
dear old Deer Trace Manor. The Farleys are settled for the remainder of
the year or longer in a fine old palazzo on the Bay of Naples, and we
have a very pressing invitation to go and help them inhabit it. But thus
far we have not been tempted beyond our