e this little party to tell you about it. I wanted to
surprise the girls." There was only a faint clapping of hands; for tears
in the eyes of the three Morton daughters discouraged merriment.

"A man, as I was saying, never gets too old--never gets too crabbed, for
what my friend Amos's friend Emerson calls 'a ruddy drop of manly
blood'--eh? So, when that 'ruddy drop of manly blood' comes a surging up
in me, I says I'll just about have a party for that drop of manly blood!
I'm going to tell you all about it. There's a woman in my mind--a very
beautiful woman; for years--a feller just as well breakdown and
confess--eh?--well for years she's been in my mind pretty much all the
time--particularly since Ruthie there was a baby and left alorn and
alone--as you may say--eh? And so," he reached down and grasped a goblet
of water firmly, and held it before him, "and so," he repeated, and his
old eyes glistened and his voice broke, "as it was just fifty years ago
to-night that heaven opened and let her come to me, before I marched off
to war--so," he hurried along, "I give you this toast--the vacant
chair--may it always, always, always be filled in my heart of hearts!"

He could not drink, but sank with his head on his arms, and when they
had ceased clapping their hands, the old man looked up, signaled to the
orchestra, and cried in a tight, cracked voice, "Now, dern ye--begin yer
fiddlin'!"

Whereupon the three Morton daughters wept and the old ladies gathered
about them and wept, and Mrs. Hilda Herdicker's ton of jet heaved as in
a tidal wave, and the old men dried their eyes, and only Lila Van Dorn
and Kenyon Adams, holding hands under the table, really knew what it was
all about.

Now they have capered through these pages of this chapter--all of the
people in this story in their love affairs. Hand in hand, they have come
to the footlights, hand in hand they have walked before us. We have seen
that love is a passion with many sides. It varies with each soul. In
youth, in maturity, in courtship, in marriage, in widowhood, in
innocence, and in the wisdom of serpents, love reflects the soul it
shines on. For love is youth in the heart--youth that always beckons,
that always shapes our visions. Love ever sheens and shimmers brightly
from within us; but what it shows to the world--that is vastly different
with each of us. For that is the shadow of his inmost being.

CHAPTER XLIII

WHEREIN WE FIND GRANT ADAMS CALLING UP