dearment, and the same
hours brought the same routine as the days passed. Yet the home was
slowly sinking into failure. And the specters that sealed the lips of
the parents who stood by and mutely watched the inner drama unfold,
watched it unfold and translate itself into life without words, without
deeds, without superficial tremor or flinching of any kind--the specters
passed the sad story from heart to heart in those mysterious silences
wherein souls in this world learn their surest truths.

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH OUR HERO STROLLS OUT WITH THE DEVIL TO LOOK AT THE HIGH
MOUNTAIN

The soup had come and gone; great platters of fried chicken had
disappeared, with incidental spinach and new peas and potatoes. A bowl
of lettuce splashed with a French dressing had been mowed down as the
grass, and the goodly company was surveying something less than an acre
of strawberry shortcake at the close of a rather hilarious dinner--a
spring dinner, to be exact. Rhoda Kollander was reciting with enthusiasm
an elaborate and impossible travesty of a recipe for strawberry
shortcake, which she had read somewhere, when the Doctor, in his
nankeens, putting his hands on the table cloth as one who was about to
deliver an oracle, ran his merry eyes down the table, gathering up the
Adamses and Mortons and Mayor Brotherton and Morty Sands; fastened his
glance upon the Van Dorns and cut in on the interminable shortcake
recipe rather ruthlessly thus in his gay falsetto:

"Tom, here--thinks he's pretty smart. And George Brotherton, Mayor of
all the Harveys, thinks he is a pretty smooth article; and the Honorable
Lady Satterthwaite here, she's got a Maryland notion that she has second
sight into the doings of her prince consort." He chuckled and grinned as
he beamed at his daughter: "And there is the princess imperial--she
thinks she's mighty knolledgeous about her father--but," he cocked his
head on one side, enjoying the suspense he was creating as he paused,
drawling his words, "I'm just going to show you how I've got 'em all
fooled."

He pulled from his pocket a long, official envelope, pulled from the
envelope an official document, and also a letter. He laid the official
document down before him and opened the letter.

"Kind o' seems to be signed by the Governor of the State," he drolled:
"And seems like the more I look at it the surer I am it's addressed to
Tom Van Dorn. I'm not much of an elocutionist and never could read at
s