youth, leaving little or nothing for another generation to do.


A southwesterly storm was beating against the dressing-room windows
of their new house in one of the hilly suburbs of San Francisco, and
threatening the unseasonable frivolity of the stucco ornamentation of
cornice and balcony. Mrs. Tucker had been called from the contemplation
of the dreary prospect without by the arrival of a visitor. On
entering the drawing-room she found him engaged in a half-admiring,
half-resentful examination of its new furniture and hangings. Mrs.
Tucker at once recognized Mr. Calhoun Weaver, a former Blue Grass
neighbor; with swift feminine intuition she also felt that his slight
antagonism was likely to be transferred from her furniture to herself.
Waiving it with the lazy amiability of Southern indifference, she
welcomed him by the familiarity of a Christian name.

"I reckoned that mebbee you opined old Blue Grass friends wouldn't
naturally hitch on to them fancy doins," he said, glancing around the
apartment to avoid her clear eyes, as if resolutely setting himself
against the old charm of her manner as he had against the more recent
glory of her surroundings, "but I thought I'd just drop in for the sake
of old times."

"Why shouldn't you, Cal?" said Mrs. Tucker with a frank smile.

"Especially as I'm going up to Sacramento to-night with some influential
friends," he continued, with an ostentation calculated to resist the
assumption of her charms and her furniture. "Senator Dyce of Kentucky,
and his cousin Judge Briggs; perhaps you know 'em, or may be Spencer--I
mean Mr. Tucker--does."