elicacy
found only in homes which are homes indeed, and not mere
dwelling-places fitted up chiefly for display. Harvey thought of the
happiness of children who are born, and live through all their
childhood, in such an atmosphere as this. Then he thought of his own
child, who had in truth no home at all. A house in Wales--a house at
Pinner--a house at Gunnersbury--presently a house somewhere else. He
had heard people defend this nomad life--why, he himself, before his
marriage, had smiled at the old-fashioned stability represented by such
families as the Mortons; had talked of 'getting into ruts', of
'mouldering', and so on. He saw it from another point of view now, and
if the choice were between rut and whirlpool----

When he awoke, and lay looking at the sunlit blind, in the stillness of
early morning he heard a sound always delightful, always soothing, that
of scythe and whetstone; then the long steady sweep of the blade
through garden grass. Morton, old stick-in-the-mud, would not let his
gardener use a mowing machine, the scythe was good enough for him; and
Harvey, recalled to the summer mornings of more than thirty years ago,
blessed him for his pig-headedness.

But another sound he missed, one he would have heard even more gladly.
Waking thus at Pinner (always about six o'clock), he had been wont to
hear the voice of his little boy, singing. Possibly this was a doubtful
pleasure to Miss Smith, in whose room Hughie slept; but, to her credit,
she had never bidden the child keep quiet. And there he lay, singing to
himself, a song without words; singing like a little bird at dawn; a
voice of innocent happiness, greeting the new day. Hughie was far off;
and in a strange room, with other children, he would not sing. But
Harvey heard his voice--the odd little bursts of melody, the liquid
rise and fall, which set to tune, no doubt, some childish fancy, some
fairy tale, some glad anticipation. Hughie lived in the golden age. A
year or two more, and the best of life would be over with him; for
boyhood is but a leaden time compared with the borderland between it
and infancy; and manhood--the curse of sex developed----

It was a merry breakfast-table. The children's sprightly talk, their
mother's excellent spirits, and Morton's dry jokes with one and all,
made Harvey feel ashamed of the rather glum habit which generally kept
him mute at the first meal of the day. Alma, too, was seldom in the
mood for breakfast conversatio