own mind; and devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of
his progeny. It would have disturbed him if he had lived to see
his grand-daughters and their times. Like so many able men of his
generation, far-seeing enough in practical affairs, he had never
considered the possibility that the descendants of those who, like
himself, had laid up treasure for their children's children might
acquire the quality of taking time, balancing pros and cons, looking
ahead, and not putting one foot down before picking the other up. He
had not foreseen, in deed, that to wobble might become an art, in order
that, before anything was done, people might know the full necessity for
doing some thing, and how impossible it would be to do indeed, foolish
to attempt to do--that which would fully meet the case. He, who had been
a man of action all his life, had not perceived how it would grow to be
matter of common instinct that to act was to commit oneself, and that,
while what one had was not precisely what one wanted, what one had not
(if one had it) would be as bad. He had never been self-conscious--it
was not the custom of his generation--and, having but little
imagination, had never suspected that he was laying up that quality
for his descendants, together with a competence which secured them a
comfortable leisure.

Of all the persons in his grand-daughter's studio that afternoon, that
stray sheep Mr. Purcey would have been, perhaps, the only one whose
judgments he would have considered sound. No one had laid up a
competence for Mr. Purcey, who had been in business from the age of
twenty.

It is uncertain whether the mere fact that he was not in his own fold
kept this visitor lingering in the studio when all other guests were
gone; or whether it was simply the feeling that the longer he stayed