o, if they had given nothing else to the world,
had furnished a future nephew with a social perspective. Raymond,
reconsidering Johnny's recent effort, now began to disparage that
improvised background, and led his wife to view his own lot--theirs,
hers--only a hundred yards from the other. But she could not respond to
old Jehiel and Beulah--though she tried to be properly sympathetic over
their son and his wife. Still less could she vitalize the infants who
had encountered an epidemic on the prairie frontier and had succumbed
more than three score years ago. If she thought of any child at all, she
thought doubtless of little Albert (now romping about in his first tweed
knickerbockers), who would not die for many years, perhaps, and who was
like enough to be buried in quite another spot.

But I think she thought, most of all, of the manly, cheerful sorrow of
Johnny McComas before the new monument in the other lot.

III

These were also days of panic. Banks went down and bank officials threw
themselves after. The city was thrilled, even charmed, to find that its
financial perturbations touched, however slightly, the nerves of London
and Paris. I myself was in Algeria that winter: my Elsie and I had
decided on three months along the Mediterranean. It was on the white,
glaring walls of the casino at Biskra that the news was first bulletined
for our eyes. It had a glare of its own, I assure you: for a few days
we knew little enough how we ourselves might be standing.

I thought of the Mid-Continent, with its cumbersome counters and
partitions done in walnut veneer and its old-fashioned pavement in
squares of black and white. I thought too of Johnny McComas's new
institution, with so many bright brass handrails and such a spread of
tasteful mosaics underfoot. How had they fared? Well, they had fared
quite differently. Why should a big, old bank go under, while a new,
little bank continues to float. I cannot tell you. I was far away at the
time. Perhaps I could not tell you even if I had been on the spot. And
to other questions, more important still, I may be unable to give, when
the pinch comes, a clearer answer. The Mid-Continent dashed, or drifted,
into the rocky hands of a receiver; and McComas's bank, after a
fortnight of wobbling, righted itself and kept on its way.

I saw Raymond again in March. The receivership was going on languidly.
Prospects were bright for nobody.

"All this puts an end to _one_ of my plan