they are apt to regard past kindness as a
guarantee of future interest in their welfare. I do not believe,
however, that I am making too large a demand upon your
friendship in asking for your good wishes in this pleasant turn
to my future affairs.

Of course I want one more favor. If you have any influence with
Deena Ponsonby, will you urge her to spend the winter with us?
Polly is writing to her by this same mail, but I know the New
England conscience will suggest to Deena that anything amusing
is wrong, and so you might explain that I am nervous about
Polly's health, and that I look to her to help me get settled
without overstrain to my wife--in short, administer a dose of
duty, and she may see her way to coming.

Ever, my dear French,
Sincerely yours,
BENJAMIN MINTHROP.

Anger gives to the natural man a pedal impulse--in plain language, he
wants to kick something. Rage flows from the toes as freely as
gunpowder ran out of the great Panjandrum's boots when he played
"Catch who catch can" on the immortal occasion of the gardener's wife
marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual
self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop's letter he got up
and--ignoring the poker and tongs--kicked the fire with a savagery
that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization.
And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and
grateful--without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing
his library floor, hurling his thoughts broadcast, since there was no
one to listen to his words.

Why were people never content to let well enough alone? he demanded.
There was old Minthrop, with enough money to spoil his son, laying
plans for Ben to muddle away a few millions in New York in the hope of
making more; or even if, by some wild chance, the boy were successful
and doubled it--still one would think the place for an only son was in
the same town with his parents. Of course it was their business, but
when it came to dragging Mrs. Ponsonby into their schemes it was a
different matter. Simeon would disapprove, he knew, and as her adviser
in Simeon's absence, he felt it his duty to tell her to stay at home
with _her_ parents till her husband returned.

And then common sense asserted itself, and he asked himself what Deena
owed to her parents; and why Harmouth w