lives of men about him: drink, dirt, unemployment and
disease, debt and dishonour. Wolf was not quick of thought; he had
little imagination, rather marvelling at other men's cleverness than
displaying any of his own, and he had reached perhaps his twenty-second
or twenty-third summer before he realized that these terrors did not
menace him, that whatever changes he made in his work would be
improvements, steps upward. For actual months after the move to New York
Wolf had pondered it, in quiet gratitude and pleasure. Rent and bills
could be paid, there might be theatre treats for the girls, and chicken
for Sunday supper, and yet the savings account in the Broadway bank
might grow steadily, too. Far from being a slave to his employer, Wolf
began to realize that this rather simple person was afraid of him,
afraid that young Sheridan and some of the other smart, ingenious,
practically educated men in his employ might recognize too soon their
own independence.

And when the second summer in New York came, and Wolf could negotiate
the modest financial deal that gave him and the girls a second-hand
motor-car to cruise about in on Sundays and holidays, when they could
picnic up in beautiful Connecticut, or unpack the little fringed red
napkins far down on the Long Island shore, life had begun to seem very
pleasant to him. Debt and dirt and all the squalid horrors of what he
had seen, and what he had read, had faded from his mind, and for awhile
he had felt that his cup could hold no more.

But now, just lately, there was something else, and although the full
significance of it had not yet actually dawned upon him, Wolf began to
realize that a change was near. It was the most miraculous thing that
had ever come to him, although it concerned only little Norma--only the
little cousin who had been an actual member of his family for all these
years.

He had heard his mother say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had
laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never
dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and
suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and
simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn in
his heart for hours.

During his busy days Wolf found himself musing about this undefined and
nebulous happiness that began to tremble, like a growing brightness
behind clouds, through all his days and nights. Had there ever been a
time, he wond