as aware
of not having treated Beaton with much ceremony, and if the young man
had returned his behavior in kind, with an electrical response to his
own feeling, had he any right to complain? After all, there was no harm
in his teaching Christine the banjo.

His wife still sat looking into the fire. "I can't see," she said, "as
we've got a bit more comfort of our lives, Jacob, because we've got such
piles and piles of money. I wisht to gracious we was back on the farm
this minute. I wisht you had held out ag'inst the childern about sellin'
it; 'twould 'a' bin the best thing fur 'em, I say. I believe in my
soul they'll git spoiled here in New York. I kin see a change in 'em
a'ready--in the girls."

Dryfoos stretched himself on the lounge again. "I can't see as Coonrod
is much comfort, either. Why ain't he here with his sisters? What does
all that work of his on the East Side amount to? It seems as if he done
it to cross me, as much as anything." Dryfoos complained to his wife
on the basis of mere affectional habit, which in married life often
survives the sense of intellectual equality. He did not expect her to
reason with him, but there was help in her listening, and though she
could only soothe his fretfulness with soft answers which were often
wide of the purpose, he still went to her for solace. "Here, I've gone
into this newspaper business, or whatever it is, on his account, and
he don't seem any more satisfied than ever. I can see he hain't got his
heart in it."

"The pore boy tries; I know he does, Jacob; and he wants to please you.
But he give up a good deal when he give up bein' a preacher; I s'pose we
ought to remember that."

"A preacher!" sneered Dryfoos. "I reckon bein' a preacher wouldn't
satisfy him now. He had the impudence to tell me this afternoon that he
would like to be a priest; and he threw it up to me that he never could
be because I'd kept him from studyin'."

"He don't mean a Catholic priest--not a Roman one, Jacob," the old woman
explained, wistfully. "He's told me all about it. They ain't the kind
o' Catholics we been used to; some sort of 'Piscopalians; and they do a
heap o' good amongst the poor folks over there. He says we ain't got
any idea how folks lives in them tenement houses, hundreds of 'em in one
house, and whole families in a room; and it burns in his heart to help
'em like them Fathers, as he calls 'em, that gives their lives to it. He
can't be a Father, he says, because he c