now how mother felt, and he did not care. He
knew how father felt--how Lycurgus Mason felt, and how the father of
Mrs. Lycurgus Mason felt; he felt hurt and slighted, and he could not
repress a feeling of bitterness toward the youth. All the world loves
a daughter-in-law, but a father's love for a son-in-law is an acquired
taste; some men never get it. And John Barclay was called away the
next morning to throttle a mill in the San Joaquin Valley, and from
there he went to North Dakota to stop the building of a competitive
railroad that tapped his territory; so September came, and with it
Jeanette Barclay went back to school. The mother wondered what the
girl would do with her last night at home. She was clearly nervous and
unsettled all the afternoon before, and made an errand into town and
came back with a perturbed face. But after dinner the mother heard
Jeanette at the telephone, and this is the one-sided dialogue the
mother caught: "Yes--this is Miss Barclay." "Oh, yes, I didn't
recognize your voice at first." "What meeting?" "Yes--yes." "And they
are not going to have it?" "Oh, I see." "You were--oh, I don't know.
Of course I should have felt--well, I--oh, it would have been all
right with me. Of course." Then the voice cheered up and she said:
"Why, of course--come right out. I understand." A pause and then,
"Yes, I know a man has to go where he is called." "Oh, she'll
understand--you know father is always on the wing." "No--why, no, of
course not--mother wouldn't think that of you. I'll tell her how it
was." "All right, good-by--yes, right away." And Jeanette Barclay
skipped away from the telephone and ran to her mother to say, "Mother,
that was Neal Ward--he wants to come out, and he was afraid you'd
think it rude for him to ask that way, but you know he had a meeting
to report and thought he couldn't come, and now they've postponed the
meeting, and I told him to come right out--wasn't that all right?"

And so out came Neal Ward, a likely-looking young man of twenty-one or
maybe twenty-two--a good six feet in height, with a straight leg, a
square shoulder, and firm jaw, set like his father's, and clean brown
eyes that did not blink. And as Jeanette Barclay, with her mother's
height, and her father's quick keen features, and her Grandmother
Barclay's eyes and dominant figure, stood beside him in the doorway,
Mrs. Jane Barclay thought a good way ahead, and Jeanette would have
blushed her face to a cinder if the mo