Gertrude, how it was that a young woman could, within the first
year of her married life, bear twins with no hurt or harm, and yet
weaken, later, through the birth of a single child.

"She doesn't seem at all lively, that's a fact," he said, with a
possible touch of impatience. "But another two weeks will do wonders for
her," he added: "she'll go back all right."

Prepotent Johnny! No doubt it was a drain on vitality to live abreast of
such a man, to keep step with his robustious stride.

On the forenoon of the day we left, Johnny was walking with Gertrude and
her mother along the accepted promenade. His excess of vitality and of
action gave him an air of gallantry not altogether pleasing to see. His
wife sat at her window, looking down and waving her hand rather
languidly. The Johnny of her belief had come, in part, assuredly, for a
bit of enjoyment. She smiled unconcernedly.

III

Raymond waited back home for Albert, and Albert did not return. We
gathered from a newspaper published near the shores of Narragansett Bay
that Albert, as his mother's triumphant possession, was now being shown
at another resort--and a more important one, judging by his
grandmother's social affiliations; also, that Mrs. McComas, who had not
done any too well on the Jersey shore, was appearing at the new
_plage_--doubtless as the just and sympathetic friend (of social
prominence in her own community) who had stood stanch through
difficulties unjustly endured. Her husband himself had, of course,
returned to the West.

His business called him, even in mid-summer. He had his bank, but he had
more than his bank. There are banks and banks--you can divide them up in
several different ways. There are, of course,--as we have seen,--the
banks that fail, and the banks that do not. And there are the banks that
exist as an end in themselves, and the banks that exist as a means to
other things: those that function along methodically, without taking on
any extraneous features; and those that serve as a nucleus for
accumulating interests, as a fulcrum to move affairs through a wide and
varied range. Of this kind was McComas's. Johnny was not the man to
stand still and let routine take its way--not the man to mark time, even
through the vacation season. Nor could he have done so even if he had
wanted to. But all I need say, just here, is that he came back home
again after three or four days, all told, and that any threatened
embarassment was nullif