stay
single and die an old maid. He had worried enough for his family. He wanted
a little peace in his house.

Drowsily he closed his eyes, and a picture came into his mind of the city
as he had seen it only a few nights before. It had been so cool, so calm
and still. At dusk he had been in the building of the great tower on
Madison Square; and when he had finished his business there, on an impulse
he had gone up to the top, and through a wide low window had stood a few
moments looking down. A soft light snow was falling; and from high up in
the storm, through the silent whirling flakes, he had looked far down upon
lights below, in groups and clusters, dancing lines, between tall phantom
buildings, blurred and ghostly, faint, unreal. From all that bustle and
fever of life there had risen to him barely a sound. And the town had
seemed small and lonely, a little glow in the infinite dark, fulfilling its
allotted place for its moment in eternity. Suddenly from close over his
head like a brazen voice out of the sky, hard and deafening and clear, the
great bell had boomed the hour. Then again had come the silence, and the
cool, soft, whirling snow.

Like a dream it faded all away, and with a curious smile on his face
presently Roger fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXX

And now he felt the approach at last of another season of quiet, one of
those uneventful times which come in family histories. As he washed and
dressed for dinner, one night a little later, he thought with satisfaction,
"How nicely things are smoothing out." His dressing for dinner, as a rule,
consisted in changing his low wing collar and his large round detachable
cuffs; but to-night he changed his cravat as well, from a black to a pearl
gray one. He hoped the whole winter would be pearl gray.

The little storm which Edith had raised over John's presence in the house
had been allayed. Deborah had talked to John, and had moved him with his
belongings to a comfortable sunny room in the small but neat apartment of a
Scotch family nearby. And John had been so sensible. "Oh, I'm fine, thank
you," he had answered simply, when in the office Roger had asked him about
his new home. So that incident was closed. Already Edith was disinfecting
John's old room to her heart's content, for George was to occupy it now.
She was having the woodwork repainted and a new paper put on the walls. She
had already purchased a small new rug, and a bed and a bureau and one easy
cha