and expansion which had made the upper middle
class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to side he nodded
his head ironically. "Expansion and freedom," ran his thoughts: "Freedom
and expansion!"

Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured against
the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity. "Conscious
of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly what is
necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the world. The
person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred and fifty-five
pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax." Such seemed the
legend of these houses.

Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping, or
to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance. Hardly any men were seen, and
they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned children were being
wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses, accompanied by a great
army of hairy or of hairless dogs.

There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs. Shelton,
a tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly feet; fond
as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy that has no
insight. She kissed her son at once with rapture, and, as usual, began
to talk of his engagement. For the first time a tremor of doubt ran
through her son; his mother's view of it grated on him like the sight of
a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy. Her splendid optimism, damped him;
it had too little traffic with the reasoning powers.

"What right," he asked himself, "has she to be so certain? It seems to
me a kind of blasphemy."

"The dear!" she cooed. "And she is coming back to-morrow? Hurrah! how I
long to see her!"

"But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July."

Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like a
little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.

"Dear old Dick!" she said, "how happy you must be!"

Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
indifferent--beamed from her.

"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at the
station."

"Cheer up!" replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully depressed.

That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
flav