d sense. Mrs. Delance
was a stout lady of the Dreadnought type. Harry settled down in the
home of his father and began to study the 'middle clahsses' with a
drag and tandem and garments for every kind of leisure. The girls went
to ride with him, and naturally began to smarten their dress and
accents and to change their estimates. His 'aristocratic' friends and
manners were much in their company and ever in their dreams.

"Of course, all that began to react on the young men: if that was the
kind of thing the girls liked, they must try to be in it. Slowly but
surely a Pointview aristocracy began its line of cleavage and a
process of integration. Crests appeared on the letter-heads and
limousine doors of the newly rich. In a month or so people of brain
and substance degenerated into a condition of hardened shameless
idiocy.

"Some of our best citizens went abroad, each to find his place among
the descendants of William the Conqueror. Suddenly I discovered that
the clerk in my office was ashamed to be seen on the street with a
package in his hands.

"Our young men began to long for wealth and leisure. They grew
impatient of the old process of thrift and industry. It was too slow.
Many of them opened accounts in Wall Street.

"Young Roger Daniels had some luck there and began to advertise the
fact with a small steam-yacht and a cruise. We were going as hard as
ever to keep up, but on higher levels of aspiration. The girls were
engaged in a strenuous contest for the prize of Harry's favor, with
that handsome young _divorcee_ well in the lead.

"Roger and his party were about to return from their cruise, and Harry
was to give them a ball at the Yacht Club.

"The day before the ball our best known physician came to see Mrs.
Potter, who was ill, and cheered us up with a story. The Doctor was
young, attractive, and able. He had threatened every appendix in
Pointview, and had a lot of inside information about our men and
women--especially the latter. He looked weary.

"'Yesterday was a little hard on me,' he said. 'It began at four in
the morning with a confinement case and ended at one A.M. There were
two operations at the hospital, a steady stream at the office, and a
twenty-mile ride over the hills. Got back in the evening pretty well
worn out. Tumbled into bed at two minutes of eleven, and was asleep
before the clock struck. The 'phone-bell at my bedside awoke me. I let
it go on for a minute. Hadn't energy enough to g