n
the palms of both of them!

As a matter of fact, Raymond was trying very diligently to do just that
thing. He worked hard and paid extra attention to Mrs. Tweksbury.

"My boy!" Emily Tweksbury urged, "come up to Maine with me for the
summer, you look peaked."

Raymond laughed.

"How about business?" he said.

"Of course," Mrs. Tweksbury replied, "no one appreciates more than I do,
Ken, your moral fibre. It's a big thing for you to create a business if
for no other reason than to give employment to less fortunate young men;
but you have other responsibilities. Your position, your fortune, they
make demands. I'm not one to underestimate the leisure class; I know the
old joke about tramps being the only leisure class in America; it's a
silly joke, but it ought to make us think. After a bit, if we don't look
out, the leisure class, here, will be all women. They'll dominate art
and poetry and society--and I must say I like a good _team_. I never
cared for too much of any one thing. Ken?"

"Yes, Aunt Emily."

"I want you to marry and have--a place."

"A place, Aunt Emily?" Raymond looked puzzled.

"Yes. Make a stand for American aristocracy--though of course you must
call it by another name. You're a clean, splendid chap--I know all about
you. I've watched apart and prayed over you in my closet. You see your
father and I made a ghastly mess of our lives, but we kept to the
code--for your sake. We left your path clear, thank God!"

"Yes, Aunt Emily--I've thanked God for that, too, in what stands for
_my_ closet."

"What stands for your closet, Ken? I've always wanted to know what takes
the place of women's sanctuaries in the lives of men."

Raymond plunged his hands into his pockets--he and Mrs. Tweksbury had
just finished breakfast, and the dining room of the old-fashioned house
opened, as it should, to the east.

"Oh! I don't know that I can tell you, Aunt Emily," Raymond fidgeted.
"Fellows are beginning to think a bit more about the clean places in
women's lives. I reckon that we haven't so much an idea about
sanctuaries of ours as that we are cultivating an honest-to-God
determination to keep from making wrecks of women's shrines. I know this
sounds blithering, but, you see, a decent chap wants to ask some girl to
give him a better thing than forgiveness when the time comes. He wants
to cut out the excuse business. He doesn't want women like you to be
ashamed of him--when they come where they have to cal