has a fine future before it. The very
atmosphere seems charged with progress."

Babcock beamed approvingly. "It's a driving place, sir. The man in
Benham who stops by the way-side to scratch his head gets left behind.
When we moved into this house a year ago looking through that window we
were at the jumping-off place; now you see houses cropping up in every
direction. It's going to be a big city. Pleased to have you stop to
supper with us," he added with burly suavity as their visitor rose.

Littleton excused himself and took his leave. Babcock escorted him to
the front door and full of his subject delayed him on the porch to touch
once more on the greatness of Benham. There was a clumsy method too in
this optimistic garrulity, for at the close he referred with some pride
to his own business career, and made a tender of his business card,
"Lewis Babcock & Company, Varnishes," with a flourish. "If you do
anything in my line, pleased to accommodate you."

Littleton departing, tickled by a pleasant sense of humor, caught
through the parlor window a last glimpse of Selma's inspired face bowing
gravely, yet wistfully, in acknowledgment of his lifted hat, and he
strode away under the spell of a brain picture which he transmuted into
words: "There's the sort of case where the cynical foreigner fails to
appreciate the true import of our American life. That couple typifies
the elements of greatness in our every-day people. At first blush the
husband's rough and material, but he's shrewd and enterprising and
vigorous--the bread winner. He's enormously proud of her, and he has
reason to be, for she is a constant stimulus to higher things. Little by
little, and without his knowing it, perhaps, she will smoothe and
elevate him, and they will develop together, growing in intelligence and
cultivation as they wax in worldly goods. After all, woman is our most
marvellous native product--that sort of woman. Heigho!" Having given
vent to this sigh, Littleton proceeded to recognize the hopelessness of
the personal situation by murmuring with a slightly forced access of
sprightliness

"If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be?"

Still he intended to see more of Mrs. Babcock, and that without
infringing the tenth or any other commandment. To flirt with a married
woman savored to him of things un-American and unworthy, and Littleton
had much too healthy an imagination to rhapsodize from such a
stand-point. Yet h