njoyed the
home-made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner he tried to talk
business with Eva's husband, or Stell's. His business talks were the
old-fashioned kind, beginning:

"Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance your raw hides and leathers."

But Ben and George didn't want to take f'rinstance your raw hides and
leathers. They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf, or
politics, or stocks. They were the modern type of business man who
prefers to leave his work out of his play. Business, with them, was a
profession--a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's
clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great
criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would
listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first
chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at
their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with
good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by
almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honored guest, who is
served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one
of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a
bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and
unsatisfied.

Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry.

"It isn't natural," Eva told him. "I never saw a man who took so little
interest in women."

"Me!" protested Jo, almost shyly. "Women!"

"Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened school boy."

So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting
age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between thirty-six and
forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, and
classes, and politics, and economics, and boards. They rather terrified
Jo. He didn't understand much that they talked about, and he felt humbly
inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had passed him by.
He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him not to bother,
and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not only of going home
quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture to any highwayman
or brawler who might molest them.

The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her, Jo?"

"Like who?" Jo would spar feebly.

"Miss Matthews."

"Who's she?"

"Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean t