"Shall we wait for them?" Dr. Lindsay asked, joining Sommers. "Porter has
got hold of Carson, and they'll keep up their stories until some one hauls
them out. My wife and daughter have already gone down. How is St.
Isidore's?"

"I left to-day. My term is up. I feel homesick already," the young doctor
answered with a smile. "Chicago is so big," he added. "I didn't know it
before."

"It's quite a village, quite a village," Dr. Lindsay answered thoughtfully.
"We'll have some more talk later, won't we?" he added confidentially, as
they passed downstairs.

The Hitchcock house revealed itself in the floods of electric light as
large and undeniably ugly. Built before artistic ambitions and cosmopolitan
architects had undertaken to soften American angularities, it was merely a
commodious building, ample enough for a dozen Hitchcocks to loll about in.
Decoratively, it might be described as a museum of survivals from the
various stages of family history. At each advance in prosperity, in social
ideals, some of the former possessions had been swept out of the lower
rooms to the upper stories, in turn to be ousted by their more modern
neighbors. Thus one might begin with the rear rooms of the third story to
study the successive deposits. There the billiard chairs once did service
in the old home on the West Side. In the hall beside the Westminster clock
stood a "sofa," covered with figured velours. That had once adorned the old
Twentieth Street drawing-room; and thrifty Mrs. Hitchcock had not
sufficiently readjusted herself to the new state to banish it to the floor
above, where it belonged with some ugly, solid brass andirons. In the same
way, faithful Mr. Hitchcock had seen no good reason why he should degrade