le bit too good-looking. She is a lovely little creature, isn't
she?"

[Illustration: Jane-Ellen sprang forward and snatched the cat from
Tucker's knee]

"She doesn't know her place."

Crane walked to the window and stood looking out for a minute, and then
he said thoughtfully:

"If ever I have a cat I shall name it Willoughby."

"Have a cat!" cried Tucker. "I thought you detested the animals as much
as I do."

"I felt rather attracted toward this one," said Crane.

III

HIS household cares disposed of, Crane went off to the stables. It was a
soft hazy autumn morning, and though he walked along whistling his heart
was heavy. These changes in background always depressed him. His mother
had been dead about two years, and at times like this he particularly
missed her. She had always contrived to make domestic difficulties not
only unimportant, but amusing. She had been pretty and young, both in
years and spirit, and had had the determining influence on her son since
his childhood.

His parents had married early and imprudently. The elder Crane, stung by
some ill-considered words of his wife's family, had resolved from the
first to make a successful career for himself. Shrewd, hard and
determined, he had not missed his mark. Burton's earliest recollections
of him were fleeting glimpses of a white, tired, silent man seldom, it
seemed to him, at home, and, by his gracious absences, giving him,
Burton, a sort of prior claim on all the time and all the attention of
his mother.

As he grew older and his father's fortune actually materialized, he
began to see that it had never given pleasure to his mother, that it had
first taken her husband's time and strength away, and had then changed
the very stuff out of which the man was made. He had grown to love not
only the game, but the rewards of the game. And Burton knew now that
very early his mother had begun deliberately to teach him the supreme
importance of human relationships, that she had somehow inculcated in
him a contempt not, perhaps, for money, but for those who valued money.
Under her tuition he had absorbed a point of view not very usual among
either rich or poor, namely that money like good health was excellent to
have, chiefly because when you had it you did not have to think about
it.

Both her lessons were valuable to a young man left at twenty-five with a
large fortune. But the second--the high delight in comp