In the little, warm house of red brick, across the street, lived Kathryn
Blair, and with her another Kathryn Blair, who was as much like the other
as it is possible for six to be like thirty. They both had wide, violet
eyes and sensitive, red lips, and very white teeth and lithe, slender
bodies. And they were both loved very much by everyone; and everyone said
what a shame it was that he or she hadn't put his or her foot down
_hard_ and made Jimmy Blair stay at home instead of letting him go
down into that unpronounceable Central American place and get killed in
an opera bouffe revolution with which he had absolutely nothing to do
except that he couldn't stand idly by and see women and little children
shot. Still, it was such a blessing to Kate that she had little Kate to
help her bear it all. And she had enough money, too; no one seemed to
know how; for Jimmy Blair was a reckless giver and a poor business men.
But John Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake had been
executors. And that explained much to those who knew; for once every two
or three months, these two men, so different and yet so alike, would
stalk solemnly, side by side, across the street and, still solemnly,
still side by side, would inform the violet-eyed widow of Jimmy Blair
that the investments that her husband had made for her had been very
fortunate and that there was in the bank for her the sum of many more
hundreds of dollars than poor Jimmy himself could have made in as many
years. And she, deifying the man who had been her husband, endowing him
with the abilities of a Morgan, a Root and a Rothschild, would believe
all that they said; and she would tell the neighbors; and they, being
good neighbors, would nod, seriously, unsmilingly. "Jimmy Blair was a
wonderful, wonderful man," they would say. And the violet eyes would grow
soft and dim, and the sensitive lips tremble a little, and the prettily-
poised head would sink forward upon the rounded breast. And she was less
unhappy; for when others love the one you love, even though that one be