rmans stuck so, and were so
unscrupulously dependent. Yet, the deed being done, she would not ignore
the duty of hospitality, and it was always she who made the old man
stay to their Sunday-evening tea when he lingered near the hour, reading
Schiller and Heine and Uhland with the boy, in the clean shirt with
which he observed the day; Lindau's linen was not to be trusted during
the week. She now concluded a season of mournful reflection by saying,
"He will get you into trouble, somehow, Basil."

"Well, I don't know how, exactly. I regard Lindau as a political
economist of an unusual type; but I shall not let him array me against
the constituted authorities. Short of that, I think I am safe."

"Well, be careful, Basil; be careful. You know you are so rash."

"I suppose I may continue to pity him? He is such a poor, lonely old
fellow. Are you really sorry he's come into our lives, my dear?"

"No, no; not that. I feel as you do about it; but I wish I felt easier
about him--sure, that is, that we're not doing wrong to let him keep on
talking so."

"I suspect we couldn't help it," March returned, lightly. "It's one of
what Lindau calls his 'brincibles' to say what he thinks."

II.

The Marches had no longer the gross appetite for novelty which urges
youth to a surfeit of strange scenes, experiences, ideas; and makes
travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues, an inexhaustible delight.
But there is no doubt that the chief pleasure of their life in New York
was from its quality of foreignness: the flavor of olives, which, once
tasted, can never be forgotten. The olives may not be of the first
excellence; they may be a little stale, and small and poor, to begin
with, but they are still olives, and the fond palate craves them. The
sort which grew in New York, on lower Sixth Avenue and in the region of
Jefferson Market and on the soft exposures south of Washington Square,
were none the less acceptable because they were of the commonest Italian
variety.

The Marches spent a good deal of time and money in a grocery of
that nationality, where they found all the patriotic comestibles and
potables, and renewed their faded Italian with the friendly family in
charge. Italian table d'hotes formed the adventure of the week, on the
day when Mrs. March let her domestics go out, and went herself to dine
abroad with her husband and children; and they became adepts in the
restaurants where they were served, and which they vari