fficial family duty
to season the general conversation with an appropriate pepper of
heartlessness, had really put it very well. She had said that while she
didn't suppose one house party over Labor Day would more than partially
rivet a broken heart, it honestly was a relief for everybody else to get
Oliver out of the house for a while, and mother needn't look at her that
way because she was as sorry as any of the rest of them for poor old
Oliver but when people went about like walking cadavers and nearly bit
you any time you mentioned anything that had to do with marriage, it was
time they went somewhere else for a while and stayed there till they got
over it.

And Mrs. Crowe, though dutifully rebuking her for her flippant treatment
of a brother's pain, agreed with the sense of her remarks, if not with
the wording. It had taken a good deal of quiet obstinacy on the part of
the whole family to get Oliver to accept Peter Piper's invitation--Mrs.
Crowe, who was understanding, knew at what cost--the cost of a man
who has lost a hand's first appearance in company with the stump
unbandaged--but anything would be better than the mopey Oliver of the
last two weeks and a half, and Mrs. Crowe had been taught by a good
deal of living the aseptic powers of having to go through the motions
of ordinary life in front of a casual audience, even when it seemed
that those motions were no longer of any account. So Oliver took clean
flannels and a bitter mind to Southampton on the last day of August,
and, as soon as he got off the train, was swung into a reel of
consecutive amusements that, fortunately, allowed him little time to
think.

When he did, it was only to wonder rather frigidly if this fellow with
glasses who played tennis and danced and swam and watched and commented
athletically on the Davis Cup finals, sitting between Elinor Piper and
Juliet Bellamy whom he had taken to dances off and on ever since he had
had his first pair of pumps, could really be he. The two people didn't
feel in the least the same.

The two Mr. Crowes, he thought. "Mr. Oliver Crowe--meet Mr. Oliver
Crowe." "On our right, ladies and gentlemen, we have one of the
country's greatest curiosities--a young gentleman who insists upon going
on existing when there is nothing at all that makes his existence useful
or interesting or proud. A very realistic wax figure that will toddle,
shoot a line and play almost any sort of game until you might easily
believe i