longed to have answered.

Wearily he sighed. Alas, human nature was a frail, incalculable
phenomenon.

How was it likely a young man with his fortune to make would regard a
girl as rich and attractive as Cynthia Galbraith, especially if her
brother chanced to be his best friend and all her family reached forth
welcoming arms to him.

Willie was not a matchmaker. Had he been impugned with the accusation
he would have denied it indignantly: Nevertheless, he had been mixed up
in too many romances not to find the relation between the sexes a
problem of engrossing interest. Furthermore, of late he had been doing
a little private castle-building, the foundations of which now abruptly
collapsed into ruins at his feet. The cornerstone of this
dream-structure had been laid the day he had first seen Robert Morton
and Delight Hathaway together. What a well-mated pair they were! For
years it had been his unwhispered ambition to see his favorite happily
married to a man who was worthy of the priceless treasure.

The Brewster household was aging fast. Captain Jonas, Captain
Benjamin, and Captain Phineas were now old men; even Zenas Henry's hair
had thinned and whitened above his temples, and Abbie, once so
tireless, was becoming content to drop her cares on younger shoulders.
Yes, Wilton was growing old, thought the inventor sadly, and he and
Celestina were unquestionably keeping pace with the rest. In the
natural course of events, before many years Delight would be deprived
of her protectors and be left alone in the great world to fend for
herself. She was well able to do so, for she was resourceful and
capable and would never be forced to marry for a home as was many a
lonely woman. Nor would she ever come to want; the village would see
to that. Notwithstanding this certainty, however, he could not bear to
think of a time when there would be no one to stand between her and the
harsher side of life; no man who would count the championship a
privilege, an honor, his dearest duty.

Wilton had never offered a husband of the type pictured in Willie's
mind. The hamlet could boast of but few young men, and the greater
part of those who lingered within its borders had done so because they
lacked the ambition and initiative to hew out for themselves elsewhere
broader fields of activity. Those of ability had gravitated to the
colleges, the business schools, or gone to test their strength in the
city's marts of commerce. W