AS TIME PASSES.


Time passed on over the heads of young Jack Schuyler and young Tom Blake
and the daughter of Jimmy Blair. They grew in stature, and in intellect.
They grew through the grades of school that lie between nine and fifteen;
and then they separated to go to boarding school.

Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went to one; the daughter of Jimmy Blair and
Kathryn Blair to another. And the baby brother that had turned out to be
a sister, and who had been named Elinor, stayed at home with the widow of
Jimmy Blair; and the widow of Jimmy Blair was now hardly as lonely as
were the parents of Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake.

John Stuyvesant Schuyler had built for himself a place at Larchmont, on
the Sound. "Grey Rocks," he called it. It was a long, low rambling house,
built of stone and of darkened wood. It sat ensconced in a deep phalanx
of great, green trees at the head of a great, green lawn. It was not a
big house, of pretension, of arrogant wealth, of many servants--of
closely-shaven shrubbery and woodeny landscape gardening. It was, rather,
a house that was a home--and there is a distinction--a vast distinction;
for there is many a house that is not a home even as there is many a home
that is not a house.

Thomas Cathcart Blake built for himself another house, next to it. That
also was a rambling, homelike place, with broad halls and deep windows,
and wide doors. And the doors he kept open most of the time; for he liked
good people, and good people liked him. His big yacht lay during most of
the summer a quarter of a mile from the end of his pier. He lived on it
part of the time, with Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake, and their guests; part