, did look attractive--but somehow not as he would have had _his_
son look. Adelaide came; he helped her to the lower seat. As he watched
them dash away, as fine-looking a pair of young people as ever
gladdened a father's eye, this father's heart lifted with pride--but
sank again. Everything _seemed_ all right; why, then, did everything
_feel_ all wrong?

"I'm not well to-day," he muttered. He returned to the porch, walking
heavily. In body and in mind he felt listless. There seemed to be
something or some one inside him--a newcomer--aloof from all that he had
regarded as himself--aloof from his family, from his work, from his own
personality--an outsider, studying the whole perplexedly and gloomily.

As he was leaving the gate a truck entered the drive. It was loaded with
trunks--his son's and his daughter's baggage on the way from the station.
Hiram paused and counted the boxes--five huge trunks--Adelaide's beyond
doubt; four smaller ones, six of steamer size and thereabouts--profuse
and elegant Arthur's profuse and elegant array of canvas and leather.
This mass of superfluity seemed to add itself to his burden. He recalled
what his wife had once said when he hesitated over some new extravagance
of the children's: "What'd we toil and save for, unless to give them a
better time than we had? What's the use of our having money if they can't
enjoy it?" A "better time," "enjoy"--they sounded all right, but were
they _really_ all right? Was this really a "better time"?--really
enjoyment? Were his and his wife's life all wrong, except as they had
contributed to this new life of thoughtless spending and useless activity
and vanity and splurge?

Instead of going toward the factories, he turned east and presently out
of Jefferson Street into Elm. He paused at a two-story brick house
painted brown, with a small but brilliant and tasteful garden in front
and down either side. To the right of the door was an unobtrusive
black-and-gold sign bearing the words "Ferdinand Schulze, M.D." He rang,
was admitted by a pretty, plump, Saxon-blond young woman--the doctor's
younger daughter and housekeeper. She looked freshly clean and
wholesome--and so useful! Hiram's eyes rested upon her approvingly; and
often afterwards his thoughts returned to her, lingering upon her and his
own daughter in that sort of vague comparisons which we would not
entertain were we aware of them.

Dr. Schulze was the most distinguished--indeed, the only
distin