. To do anything now
except appear joyful about it would be to make ourselves perfectly
ridiculous. We can't do that, and you know it."

Her husband still looked everything but contented.

"So far as the young fellow himself goes," he said, "I like him, rather.
I've talked with him only once, of course, and then he and I weren't
agreeing exactly. But I liked him, nevertheless. If he were anything but
a fool poet I should be more reconciled."

He was snubbed immediately. "THAT," declared Mrs. Fosdick, with
decision, "is the only thing that makes him possible."

So Mrs. Fosdick's welcome was whole-handed if not whole-hearted. And her
husband's also was cordial and intimate. The only member of the Fosdick
household who did not regard the guest with favor was Googoo. That
aristocratic bull-pup was still irreconcilably hostile. When Albert
attempted to pet him he appeared to be planning to devour the caressing
hand, and when rebuked by his mistress retired beneath a davenport,
growling ominously. Even when ignominiously expelled from the room he
growled and cast longing backward glances at the Speranza ankles. No,
Googoo did not dissemble; Albert was perfectly sure of his standing in
Googoo's estimation.

Dinner that evening was a trifle more formal than he had expected, and
he was obliged to apologize for the limitations of his wardrobe. His
dress suit of former days he had found much too dilapidated for use.
Besides, he had outgrown it.

"I thought I was thinner," he said, "and I think I am. But I must have
broadened a bit. At any rate, all the coats I left behind won't do at
all. I shall have to do what Captain Snow, my grandfather, calls 'refit'
here in New York. In a day or two I hope to be more presentable."

Mrs. Fosdick assured him that it was quite all right, really. Madeline
asked why he didn't wear his uniform. "I was dying to see you in it,"
she said. "Just think, I never have."

Albert laughed. "You have been spared," he told her. "Mine was not a
triumph, so far as fit was concerned. Of course, I had a complete new
rig when I came out of the hospital, but even that was not beautiful.
It puckered where it should have bulged and bulged where it should have
been smooth."

Madeline professed not to believe him.

"Nonsense!" she declared. "I don't believe it. Why, almost all the
fellows I know have been in uniform for the past two years and theirs
fitted beautifully."

"But they were officers, weren't t