coming now, dear. There's feeling
against Everard. You're right, but you exaggerate it. It's instinctive
and unformulated. It hasn't gone far and won't go any farther. He won't
let it. The rally and the library and this new democracy stuff, stag
dinners to Ward's crowd and all, are part of a campaign to stop it. The
campaign will succeed. Everard's own crowd won't quarrel with him. They
can't afford to. Everard has pulled through worse times than this. I've
helped him myself, and I shall help him again.

"There'll be no change, Millie. Things will go on just the way they are.
I've lived the best years of my life believing that it was best they
should, and if I'm wrong, I'm too old to change my mind. I've said
somebody had to own the town, and it might as well be Everard. I've said
the Burrs and Kents and Randalls, and old Joe Grant's young wife with
their parties and drinks and silly little love affairs, were playing too
hard, but doing no real harm, planting their cheap, fake smart set here
in Green River where it don't belong. Now poor Theodore Burr's dead.
That don't look like play. Harry Randall's so deep in debt to the bank
for what Everard's let him borrow that he has to stay on there at three
thousand a year, though he's been offered twice that in Wells. Everard
won't let him go. And the best I can say about myself in the years I've
worked for Everard is that I've kept my hands clean, if I have had to
keep my eyes shut, but I can say that to you, Millie."

"It does look like old times down there," he went on softly, after a
minute. "The street and the lights are the same. And it sounds like old
times. It was from a rally in the hall that I first went home with you,
Millie. Remember? I was just a boy then, but I wish I was half the man I
was then, to-night." He heard a murmur of protest, and laughed. "But I
do, Millie. I--wouldn't be helping Everard."

"Oh, Hugh!"

"Don't worry. Everard will pull through all right. Look at the Randalls
over there, starting for the hall. Leave your windows open, Millie, and
you'll soon hear them all cheering for Everard. The moon won't rise till
late, but it will be full to-night. Listen, the band's going into the
hall now."

The Judge rested his cheek for a moment against his wife's soft, smooth
hair, the decorous, satisfying caress of a decorous generation, then he
raised his head with a long, tired sigh.

"I wish I was young," he said. "I wish I was young to-night."