a table heaped with periodicals; even that indispensable adjunct
of American homes, the graphophone; but no curtains, nor cushions, nor
draperies, none of the little touches that speak of feminine habitation.
In twenty years, Kate had made few changes in the house; she regarded
Basil Kildare's home as merely a temporary abode until Jacques came to
claim her and her children.

"I'm in luck!" thought the collector of impressions. "This is the
setting for my new novel."

Here was the Kentucky, the America, he had hitherto sought in vain, with
its suggestion of the backwoods of civilization, the pioneer, the
primitive. And to emphasize and give the suggestion point, here was an
example of the finest feminine beauty left to this degenerating world,
beauty such as the Greeks knew, large-limbed, deep-bosomed, clear-eyed,
product of a vigorous past, full of splendid augury for the future.

"What sons the woman must have!" he mused, stirred; and then remembered,
with quite a sense of personal injury, that there were no sons.

He looked again with new interest at the daughter: but she disappointed
him. She was too dainty, too petite, with a pink-and-white Dresden
prettiness that was almost insignificant. (He missed, as people often
did, the shrewd gray gleam behind those infantile lashes.) He hoped that
the second daughter might prove truer to type.

Jacqueline, meanwhile, had made an unobtrusive appearance through a door
just behind Professor Thorpe, and manifested her presence by a pinch on
his arm.

He said "Ouch!" and dropped his eye-glass.

"Hush!" she admonished him, replacing it on his nose in motherly
fashion. "I want to look them over and choose a victim before they see
me. Why, you old duck of a godparent! Four of them--and all so young and
beautiful. Two apiece. I hope they can dance?"

"Warranted to give perfect satisfaction in the ballroom, or money
returned," he murmured. "But they aren't professors, my dear. None of
ours seemed young and beautiful enough for your purposes."

She gave his arm an ecstatic squeeze. "I knew it! I simply knew the one
in gray, with the haughty nose, couldn't be a professor."

"He's worse," warned Thorpe. "He's an author."

She gave a little squeal. "An author! But where did you get him, Goddy?"
(Such was her rather irreverent abbreviation of "godfather," employed to
signify especial approbation.)

"I didn't. He got me. It is my famous nephew from Boston--'from Boston
and P