remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was
troubled. He ceased then all efforts to arrange a meeting to which he had
looked forward with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage to
the other. But he was grieved toward his grandfather, becoming sharp and
even disdainful to the queer, silent old man, at those times when the
father was in the village. He could have no love and but little
friendliness for one who slighted his dear father. And so a breach
widened between them from year to year, as the child grew stouter fibre
into his sentiments of loyalty and justice.

Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly depriving him of
this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant
vitality that could fashion others to be still more warmly cherished.

With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between
their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had
not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of
humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face,
she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken
wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was
more plausible now that a prince, "all dressed up in shiny Prince
Clothes," would come riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the
saddle in front of him and gallop off, calling her "My beautiful darling!"
while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the cook, danced up and down on the
front piazza impotently shouting "Help!" She suspected then, when it was
too late, that certain people would bitterly wish they had acted in a
different manner. If this did not happen soon, she meant to go into a
convent where she would not be forever told things for her own good by
those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where she could devote a
quiet life to the bringing up of her children.

The little boy sympathised with her. He knew what it was to be
disappointed in one's family. The family he would have chosen for his own
was that of which two excellent views were given on the circus bills. In
one picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in their pink
tights, ranging from the tall father and mother down through four children
to a small boy that always looked much like himself. In the other picture
these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through the air at the very
top of the great tent, fro