Satan and his angel, Fulkerson, behind me, and it's all right. Let's go
in to the children."

He came round the table to Isabel, where she sat in a growing
distraction, and lifted her by the waist from her chair.

She sighed deeply. "Shall we tell the children about it?"

"No. What's the use, now?"

"There wouldn't be any," she assented. When they entered the family room,
where the boy and girl sat on either side of the lamp working out the
lessons for Monday which they had left over from the day before, she
asked, "Children, how would you like to live in New York?"

Bella made haste to get in her word first. "And give up the Friday
afternoon class?" she wailed.

Tom growled from his book, without lifting his eyes: "I shouldn't want to
go to Columbia. They haven't got any dormitories, and you have to board
round anywhere. Are you going to New York?" He now deigned to look up at
his father.

"No, Tom. You and Bella have decided me against it. Your perspective
shows the affair in its true proportions. I had an offer to go to New
York, but I've refused it."