one year the
interurban reached out steel arms and scooped her to the bosom of the
city.

Overnight, as it were, the inoculation was complete. Bungalows and
one-story, vine-grown real-estate offices sprang up on large,
light-brown tracts of improved property, traffic sold by the book. The
new Banner Store, stirred by the heavy, three-trolley interurban cars
and the new proximity of the city, swung a three-color electric sign
across the sidewalk and instituted a trading-stamp system. But in spite
of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising space in the
Newton _Weekly Gazette_, Julius Binswanger felt the suction of the city
drawing at his strength, and at the close of the second summer he took
invoice and frowned at what he saw.

The frown remained an indelible furrow between his eyes. Mrs. Binswanger
observed it across the family table one Saturday, and paused in the epic
rite of ladling soup out of a tureen, a slight pucker on her large,
soft-fleshed face.

"Honest, Julius, when you come home from the store nights right away I
get the blues."

Mr. Binswanger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the
bulging bib of his napkin. Late sunshine percolated into the dining-room
through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design
like coarse lace across his inquiring features.

"Right away you get what, Becky?"

"Right away I get the blues. A long face you've had for so long I can't
remember."

"Ya, ya, Becky, something you got to have to talk about. A long face she
puts on me yet, children."

"Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!"

Mr. Isadore Binswanger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the
padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed
backward the mane of his black pompadour.

"Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it."

Mr. Binswanger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.

"A dude like you with a red-and-white shirt like I wouldn't keep in
stock ain't--"

"See, ma, you started something."

"'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy
comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to
be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now
your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something--something
what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?"

Miss Pearl Binswanger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and
showed t