Marlborough, Mass. Then he leaned back in his chair, and, clasping his
hands behind his head, looked fixedly at the picture of his fair young
wife which hung above his desk.

"A bad job well done, Louise--or a good one. Our little lass isn't very
well adapted to making her way among strangers, and the Bohemianism of
this life is a poor preparation for the heavy respectability of a New
England existence. Lawrence is a good fellow, but that wife of his
always put me in mind of iced champagne, sparkling and cold." He sighed
heavily, "Poor little Vad! It is a dreary outlook, but it seems my one
resource. Lawrence is the only relative I have in the world.

"After all, I may be fighting windmills, and years hence may laugh at
this morning's work as an example of the folly of yielding to
unnecessary alarm. Danvers is getting childish. All physicians get to be
old fogies, I fancy, a natural sequence to a life spent in hunting down
germs I suppose. They grow to imagine them where none exist."

He rose, and strolled out on the veranda. As he did so, a negro, whose
snow-white hair had earned for him from his master the sobriquet of
Methusaleh, came towards the broad front steps. He was a grotesque image
as he stood doffing a large palm-leaf hat, and Lenox Hildreth felt an
irresistible inclination to laugh, and laughed accordingly. His
morning's occupation had been one of the rare instances in which he had
run counter to his inclinations. Sky blue cotton trousers showed two
brown ankles before his feet hid themselves in a pair of clumsy shoes; a
scarlet shirt, ornamented with large brass buttons and fastened at the
throat with a cotton handkerchief of vivid corn color, was surmounted by
an old nankeen coat, upon whose gaping elbows a careful wife had sewn
patches of green cloth; his hands were encased in white cotton gloves