While he strained with longing to go down and show himself a
man--not just a scullion in an unsuccessful tea-room--Father stood on
the edge of the cliff and watched the life-savers launch the boat, saw
them disappear from the radius of the calcium carbide beach-light into
the spume of surf. He didn't even wait to see them return. Mother needed
him, and he trotted back to tell her all about it.

They went happily to bed, and she slept with her head cuddled on his
left shoulder, his left arm protectingly about her.

It was still raining when they awoke, a weary, whining drizzle. And
Father was still virile with desire of heroism. He scampered out to see
what he could of the wreck.

He returned, suddenly. His voice was low and unhappy as he demanded,
"Oh, Mother, it's-- Come and see."

He led her to the kitchen door and round the corner of the house. The
beloved rose-arbor had been wrecked by the storm. The lattice-work was
smashed. The gray bare stems of the crimson ramblers drooped drearily
into a sullen puddle. The green settee was smeared with splashed mud.

"They couldn't even leave us that," Father wailed, in the voice of a man
broken. "Oh yes, yes, yes, I'll go to Lulu's with you. But we won't
stay. Will we! I will fight again. I did have a little gumption left
last night, didn't I? Didn't I? But--but we'll go there for a while."

CHAPTER IX

"Doggonit, I liked that cap. It was a good one," said Father, in a tone
of settled melancholy.

"Well, it wa'n't much of a cap," said Mother, "but I do know how you
feel."

They sat in their tremendously varnished and steam-heated room on the
second floor of daughter Lulu's house, and found some occupation in
being gloomy. For ten days now they had been her guests. Lulu had
received them with bright excitement and announced that they needn't
ever do any more work, and were ever so welcome--and then she had
started to reform them. It may seem a mystery as to why a woman whose
soul was composed of vinegar and chicken feathers, as was Lulu Appleby
Hartwig's, should have wanted her parents to stay with her. Perhaps she
liked them. One does find such anomalies. Anyway, she condescendingly
bought them new hats. And her husband, a large, heavy-blooded man, made
lumbering jokes at their expense, and expected them to laugh.

"The old boy still likes to play the mouth-organ--nothing like these old
codgers for thinking they're still kids," Mr. Hartwig puffed at dinner,