ich, I'm sure,
ought to satisfy you. Then you can talk as much as you like, and as
loud as you like, about old times,--and the louder and the more the
better,--but I don't think HE'LL like it."

"But the baby!" expostulated Barker. "Stacy's just wild to see him--and
we can't bring him down to the table--though we MIGHT," he added,
momentarily brightening.

"After dinner," said Mrs. Barker severely, "we will walk through the big
drawing-rooms, and THEN Mr. Stacy may come upstairs and see him in his
crib; but not before. And now, George, I do wish that to-night, FOR
ONCE, you would not wear a turn-down collar, and that you would go to
the barber's and have him cut your hair and smooth out the curls. And,
for Heaven's sake! let him put some wax or gum or SOMETHING on your
mustache and twist it up on your cheek like Captain Heath's, for it
positively droops over your mouth like a girl's ringlet. It's quite
enough for me to hear people talk of your inexperience, but really I
don't want you to look as if I had run away with a pretty schoolboy.
And, considering the size of that child, it's positively disgraceful.
And, one thing more, George. When I'm talking to anybody, please don't
sit opposite to me, beaming with delight, and your mouth open. And don't
roar if by chance I say something funny. And--whatever you do--don't
make eyes at me in company whenever I happen to allude to you, as I did
before Captain Heath. It is positively too ridiculous."

Nothing could exceed the laughing good humor with which her husband
received these cautions, nor the evident sincerity with which he
promised amendment. Equally sincere was he, though a little more
thoughtful, in his severe self-examination of his deficiencies, when,
later, he seated himself at the window with one hand softly encompassing
his child's chubby fist in the crib beside him, and, in the instinctive
fashion of all loneliness, looked out of the window. The southern
trades were whipping the waves of the distant bay and harbor into yeasty
crests. Sheets of rain swept the sidewalks with the regularity of a
fusillade, against which a few pedestrians struggled with flapping
waterproofs and slanting umbrellas. He could look along the deserted
length of Montgomery Street to the heights of Telegraph Hill and its
long-disused semaphore. It seemed lonelier to him than the mile-long
sweep of Heavy Tree Hill, writhing against the mountain wind and
its aeolian song. He had never felt