g connecting the hammock and the rocking-chair in which
sat Mrs Burgess, acting as a mild motor for both the chair and the
hammock. "That's Noble Dill walking along the sidewalk," Mrs. Burgess
said, interpreting for her husband's failing eyes. "I bowed to him, but
he hardly seemed to see us and just barely lifted his hat. He needn't be
cross with _us_ because some other young man's probably taking Julia
Atwater out driving!"

"Yes, he need!" Mr. Burgess declared. "A boy in his condition needs to
be cross with everything. Sometimes they get so cross they go and drink
liquor. Don't you remember?"

She laughed. "I remember once!" she assented, and laughed again.

"Why, it's a terrible time of life," her husband went on. "Poets and
suchlike always take on about young love as if it were a charming and
romantic experience, but really it's just a series of mortifications.
The young lover is always wanting to do something dashing and romantic
and Sir Walter Raleigh-like, but in ordinary times about the wildest
thing he can do, if he can afford it, is to learn to run a Ford. And he
can't stand a word of criticism; he can't stand being made the least
little bit of fun of; and yet all the while his state of mind lays him
particularly open to all the things he can't stand. He can't stand
anything, and he has to stand everything. Why, it's a _horrible_ time of
life, mamma!"

"Yes, it is," she assented placidly. "I'm glad we don't have to go
through it again, Freddie; though you're only eighty-two, and with a
girl like Julia Atwater around nobody ought to be sure."

CHAPTER FIVE

Although Noble had saluted the old couple so crossly, thus unconsciously
making them, as he made the sidewalk, proxy for Mr. Atwater, so to
speak, yet the sight of them penetrated his outer layers of
preoccupation and had an effect upon him. In the midst of his suffering
his imagination paused for a shudder: What miserable old gray shadows
those two were! Thank Heaven he and Julia could never be like that! And
in the haze that rose before his mind's eye he saw himself leading Julia
through years of adventure in far parts of the world: there were
glimpses of himself fighting grotesque figures on the edge of Himalayan
precipices at dawn, while Julia knelt by the tent on the glacier and
prayed for him. He saw head-waiters bowing him and Julia to tables in
"strange, foreign cafes," and when they were seated, and he had ordered
dishes that amazed h