rospect. I might have known
your great-grand-parents. Possibly I did. Did they live in Boston?"

"I believe so."

"You are not sure, then?"

"Yes," she replied. "Now I think, they did."

"I had a very large circle of acquaintances in the city," I said. "It
is not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps I may have
known them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I should chance to be
able to tell you all about your great-grandfather, for instance?"

"Very interesting."

"Do you know your genealogy well enough to tell me who your forbears
were in the Boston of my day?"

"Oh, yes."

"Perhaps, then, you will some time tell me what some of their names
were."

She was engrossed in arranging a troublesome spray of green, and did
not reply at once. Steps upon the stairway indicated that the other
members of the family were descending.

"Perhaps, some time," she said.

After breakfast, Dr. Leete suggested taking me to inspect the central
warehouse and observe actually in operation the machinery of
distribution, which Edith had described to me. As we walked away from
the house I said, "It is now several days that I have been living in
your household on a most extraordinary footing, or rather on none at
all. I have not spoken of this aspect of my position before because
there were so many other aspects yet more extraordinary. But now that I
am beginning a little to feel my feet under me, and to realize that,
however I came here, I am here, and must make the best of it, I must
speak to you on this point."

"As for your being a guest in my house," replied Dr. Leete, "I pray you
not to begin to be uneasy on that point, for I mean to keep you a long
time yet. With all your modesty, you can but realize that such a guest
as yourself is an acquisition not willingly to be parted with."

"Thanks, doctor," I said. "It would be absurd, certainly, for me to
affect any oversensitiveness about accepting the temporary hospitality
of one to whom I owe it that I am not still awaiting the end of the
world in a living tomb. But if I am to be a permanent citizen of this
century I must have some standing in it. Now, in my time a person more
or less entering the world, however he got in, would not be noticed in
the unorganized throng of men, and might make a place for himself
anywhere he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody is a
part of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outside the
system,