acon, grumble at
the youngest boy, open the paper, read the breach of promise case on
page three, drop it, and ask your wife for more coffee--hot--glance at
your letters again, then reopen the paper at the news page, and find
that the Tsar of Russia has been murdered, and a few American cities
tumbled to fragments by an earthquake--you know how you feel then.
James Ollerenshaw felt like that. The captain of the bowling-club,
however, poising a bowl in his right hand, and waiting for James
Ollerenshaw to leave his silken dalliance, saw nothing but an old man
and a young woman sitting on a Corporation seat.

CHAPTER III

MARRYING OFF A MOTHER

"Yes," said Helen Rathbone, "mother fell in love. Don't you think it was
funny?"

"That's as may be," James Ollerenshaw replied, in his quality of the
wiseacre who is accustomed to be sagacious on the least possible
expenditure of words.

"We both thought it was awfully funny," Helen said.

"Both? Who else is there?"

"Why, mother and I, of course! We used to laugh over it. You see, mother
is a very simple creature. And she's only forty-four."

"She's above forty-four," James corrected.

"She _told_ me she was thirty-nine five years ago," Helen protested.

"Did she tell ye she was forty, four years ago?"

"No. At least, I don't remember."

"Did she ever tell ye she was forty?"

"No."

"Happen she's not such a simple creature as ye thought for, my lass,"
observed James Ollerenshaw.

"You don't mean to infer," said Helen, with cold dignity, "that my
_mother_ would tell me a lie?"

"All as I mean is that Susan was above thirty-nine five years ago, and I
can prove it. I had to get her birth certificate when her father died,
and I fancy I've got it by me yet." And his eyes added: "So much for
that point. One to me."

Helen blushed and frowned, and looked up into the darkling heaven of her
parasol; and then it occurred to her that her wisest plan would be to
laugh. So she laughed. She laughed in almost precisely the same manner
as James had heard Susan laugh thirty years previously, before love had
come into Susan's life like a shell into a fortress, and finally blown
their fragile relations all to pieces. A few minutes earlier the sight
of great-stepuncle James had filled Helen with sadness, and he had not
suspected it. Now her laugh filled James with sadness, and she did not
suspect it. In his sadness, however, he was glad that she laughed so
naturally, a