y-four minutes, had foreseen for him--when the
mail should be distributed! Once, just from sheer content, he stopped
his:

"Did you ever ever ever
In your life life life
See the devil devil devil
Or his wife wife wife--"

and turned and looked at his Mary.

"Nice day, Kit?" he said; and she said, "Lovely!" Then she brushed her
elderly rosy cheek against his shabby coat and kissed it. They had been
married for thirty years, and she had held up his hands as he placed
upon the altar of a repugnant duty, the offering of a great
renunciation. She had hoped that the birth of their last, and only
living, child, Edith, would reconcile him to the material results of the
renunciation; but he was as indifferent to money for his girl as he had
been for himself.... So there they were, now, living rather carefully,
in an old stone farmhouse on one of the green foothills of the Allegheny
Mountains. The thing that came nearest to soothing the bruises on his
mind was the possibilities he saw in Maurice.

"The inconsequence of the scamp amounts to genius!" he used to tell his
Mary with admiring displeasure at one or another of Maurice's scrapes.
"Heaven knows what he'll do before he gets to the top of Fool Hill, and
begins to run on the State Road! Look at this mid-year performance. He
ought to be kicked for flunking. He simply dropped everything except his
music! Apparently he _can't_ study. Even spelling is a matter of private
judgment with Maurice! Oh, of course, I know I ought to have scalped
him; his father would have scalped him. But somehow the scoundrel gets
round me! I suppose its because, though he is provoking, he is never
irritating. And he's as much of a fool as I was at his age! That keeps
me fair to him. Well, he has _stuff_ in him, that boy. He's as truthful
as Edith; an appalling tribute, I know--but you like it in a cub. And
there's no flapdoodle about him; and he never cried baby in his life.
And he has imagination and music and poetry! Edith is a nice little clod
compared to him."

The affection of these two people for Maurice could hardly have been
greater if he had been their son. "Mother loves Maurice better 'an she
loves me," Edith used to reflect; "I guess it's because he never gets
muddy the way I do, and tracks dirt into the house. He wipes his feet."

"What do you suppose," Mrs. Houghton said, remembering this summing up
of things, "Edith told me this morning that the reason I loved Maurice
more t