evotion ought to win a reward. How
blind he and his father had been, thinking of Betty Leverett.

Oh, how could they let Doris go! Yet a lover like this was not to be
curtly refused.

"I shall not stand in your way," quietly.

"Thank you a thousand times. But if she had been for you, as I feared, I
should have proved man enough to keep silent and go my way. It has been
a happy summer, and in two weeks more it will end. Still, I may be able
to get an appointment here. I shall try for it and return."

"Come," said Cary Adams, and he went out feeling there had been a great
change in the world, and he was wrapped about with some mysterious
influence.

Doris had thought of Captain Hawthorne on the day of his, Cary's,
return. How many times besides had she thought of him? And she had
recalled giving him the rose.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE COST OF WOMANHOOD

A happy fortnight. It was worth all the after-pain to have it to
remember. When Boston was a great city half a century later, and there
had been another war, and Captain Hawthorne had risen in the ranks and
been put on the retired list, he came a grizzled old man to find the
place that had always lived in his remembrance. But the old house had
been swept away by the march of improvement, the rounding corner
straightened and given over to business, and the Common was magnificent
in beauty. The tall, thin, scholarly man had gone to the wife of his
youth. Doris, little Doris, was very happy. So what did it matter?

There was a succession of lovely days. One morning, early, Captain
Hawthorne joined Doris and her uncle in a long ride over on Boston Neck.
They found an odd old tavern kept by a sailor who had been round the
world and taken a hand in the "scrimmage," as he called it, and with his
small prize money bought out the place. There was some delightful bread
and cold chicken, wine and bottled cider equal to champagne. There was
another long lovely day when with Betty they went up to Salem and drove
around the quaint streets and watched the signs of awakening business.
There was Fort Pickering, the lighthouse out on the island, the pretty
Common, the East India Marine Society's hall with its curiosities (quite
wonderful even then), and the clean streets with their tidy shops, the
children coming from school, the housewives going about on errands.
Foster Manning drove his grandmother down to join them; and he was
almost a young man now. He told Doris they all m