have been perfectly grotesque!"

VIII.

Their affliction brought the Dryfooses into humaner relations with the
Marches, who had hitherto regarded them as a necessary evil, as the
odious means of their own prosperity. Mrs. March found that the women of
the family seemed glad of her coming, and in the sense of her usefulness
to them all she began to feel a kindness even for Christine. But she
could not help seeing that between the girl and her father there was an
unsettled account, somehow, and that it was Christine and not the old man
who was holding out. She thought that their sorrow had tended to refine
the others. Mela was much more subdued, and, except when she abandoned
herself to a childish interest in her mourning, she did nothing to shock
Mrs. March's taste or to seem unworthy of her grief. She was very good to
her mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and to her father, whom it
had apparently fallen upon with crushing weight. Once, after visiting
their house, Mrs. March described to March a little scene between Dryfoos
and Mela, when he came home from Wall Street, and the girl met him at the
door with a kind of country simpleness, and took his hat and stick, and
brought him into the room where Mrs. March sat, looking tired and broken.
She found this look of Dryfoos's pathetic, and dwelt on the sort of
stupefaction there was in it; he must have loved his son more than they
ever realized. "Yes," said March, "I suspect he did. He's never been
about the place since that day; he was always dropping in before, on his
way up-town. He seems to go down to Wall Street every day, just as
before, but I suppose that's mechanical; he wouldn't know what else to
do; I dare say it's best for him. The sanguine Fulkerson is getting a
little anxious about the future of 'Every Other Week.' Now Conrad's gone,
he isn't sure the old man will want to keep on with it, or whether he'll
have to look up another Angel. He wants to get married, I imagine, and he
can't venture till this point is settled."

"It's a very material point to us too, Basil," said Mrs. March.

"Well, of course. I hadn't overlooked that, you may be sure. One of the
things that Fulkerson and I have discussed is a scheme for buying the
magazine. Its success is pretty well assured now, and I shouldn't be
afraid to put money into it--if I had the money."

"I couldn't let you sell the house in Boston, Basil!"

"And I don't want to. I wish we could go back a