ames' early
environment, and not his sense of humor, was responsible for his
occasional lapses. For James' father, old Sid Thornton, as he was
always called, could not have boasted even a bowing acquaintance with
the very people who were now not only falling over each other in their
mad anxiety to entertain his son, but were even more than willing to
find that same son a suitable wife among their own fair daughters. Old
Sid Thornton's homely boy, Jim, running away to sea, and Mr. James
Thornton, back to the old town with a fortune at his disposal, and
living in a mansion that was the admiration and envy of the whole
county, were two totally different entities.

Temptingly did the mothers with marriageable daughters display their
wares. But of all the number, and many of them were passing fair, Mr.
James Thornton cast longing eyes on only one, and that was Nancy
Warren. Frankly, he wanted to get married, settle down, perhaps go
into politics when he had time; he wanted a mistress for that
beautiful house on the hill, some one who would know how to preside at
his table and dispense his hospitality; some one, in short, who would
know, instinctively, all the little niceties which were as a sealed
book to him, and the tall, fair, thoroughbred Miss Warren seemed
ideally fitted for the post.

Encouraged thereto by the tactful Mrs. Warren, James had poured into
her eager ears the secrets of his honest soul, and Mrs. Warren had
listened with a sweet and ready sympathy that had caused James quite
to forget a certain stinging snubbing he had received from the
selfsame lady, because once, back in the dark ages--before Nancy had
opened her blue eyes on this naughty world--when he was a gawky,
freckle-faced boy of sixteen, he had dared to walk home from church
with Mildred, the eldest daughter of the house of Warren.

That was long before Mrs. Warren had felt poverty's vicious pinch, and
before her life had become one continual struggle to make both ends
meet. Somehow, her point of view had changed since then--points of
view _will_ change when the howl of the wolf is heard in the near
distance, and yet one must smile and smile before one's little
world--and, all other things being equal, Mr. James Thornton's home,
garish with gold and onyx, and fairly shrieking with bad tapestries
and faulty paintings and ponderous furniture, seemed as promising and
fair a haven as she could possibly find for the youngest and only
remaining daugh