auty in the days when Madison was
President."

Then putting the subject aside as if she had finished with it for ever,
she began talking to him about the books she was reading. Of all the
girls he knew she was the only one who ever opened a book except one
that had been forbidden.

An hour later, when Margaret went home with her father, Stephen turned
back, after putting her into the car, with a warmer emotion in his heart
than he had ever felt for her before. She was not only lovely and
gentle; she had revealed unexpected qualities of mind which might
develop later into an attraction that he had never dreamed she could
possess. Never, he felt, had the outlook appeared so desirable. He was
in that particular dreaminess of mood when one is easily borne off on
waves of sentiment or imagination; and it is possible that, if his
mother had been able to refrain from improving perfection, he might
have found himself sufficiently in love with Margaret for all practical
purposes. But Mrs. Culpeper, who had no need of dissimulation since she
had always got things by showing that she wanted them entirely for the
good of others, was incapable of leaving her son to work out his own
future. When he entered the house again he found her awaiting him at the
foot of the staircase.

"I hope you had a pleasant evening, Stephen."

"Yes, Mother, very pleasant."

"Margaret is a dear girl, and so well brought up. Her mother has a great
deal for which to be thankful."

"A great deal, I am sure." A sharp sense of irritation had dispelled the
dreamy sentiment with which he had parted from Margaret. To his mother,
he knew, the evening appeared only as one more carefully planned and
carelessly neglected opportunity; and the knowledge of this exasperated
him in a measure that was absurdly disproportionate to the cause.

"She is so refreshing after the things you hear about other girls,"
pursued Mrs. Culpeper. "Poor Mrs. St. John was obliged to go to a rest
cure, they say, because of the worry she has had over Geraldine; and the
other girls are almost as troublesome, I suppose. That is why I am so
thankful that you should have taken a fancy to Margaret. She is just the
kind of girl I should like to have for a daughter-in-law."

"You'll have a long time to wait, Mother. I don't want to marry anybody
until I need a nurse in my old age."

He spoke jestingly, but his mother, with her usual tenacity, held fast
to the subject. Under the flickeri