go with him.]

A little while later in the evening, Mr. Philip Waters, walking down
Broadway (which thoroughfare was getting to have a fairly suburban
look), informed the French count that in his, Mr. Waters's, opinion,
young Jacob Dolph would own that house before long.

Young Jacob Dolph's father insisted on repetitions of the bachelor
dinner, but he never again appeared in the great dining-room. When there
was a stag party he took his own simple dinner at five o'clock and went
to bed early, and lay awake until his son had dismissed the last mild
reveller, and he could hear the light, firm, young footstep mounting the
stairs to the bedroom door opposite his own.

* * * * *

That was practically the end of it for old Jacob Dolph. The maiden aunt,
who had been invited, was notified that she could not come, for Mr.
Dolph was not well enough to open his house that winter. But it was
delicately intimated to her that if he grew worse she might still be
sent for, and that alleviated her natural disappointment. She liked to
give parties; but there is also a chastened joy for some people in being
at the head of a house of mourning.

Old Mr. Dolph grew no worse physically, except that he was inclined to
make his daily walks shorter, and that he grew fonder of sitting at home
in the little breakfast-room, where the sun shone almost all day long,
and where Mrs. Dolph had once been fond of coming to sew. Her little
square work-table of mahogany stood there still. There the old gentleman
liked to dine, and often he dined alone. Young Jacob was in great demand
all over town, and his father knew that he ought to go out and amuse
himself. And the young man, although he was kind and loving, and never
negligent in any office of respect or affection, had that strong youth
in him which makes it impossible to sit every day of the week opposite
an old man whose world had slipped by him, who knew nothing of youth
except to love it and wonder at it.

In the morning, before he went out for his daily tramp into town, old
Jacob would say to young Jacob:

"I suppose I shall see you at dinner, my boy?"

And young Jacob would say, "Yes, sir," or "No, sir, I think not. Mrs.
Des Anges was in town yesterday, and she asked me to ride up there
to-day and dine. And Diana" (Diana was his big black mare) "needs a
little work; she's getting badly out of condition. So, if it doesn't
matter to you, sir, I'll just run u