his shoulder; his mother and sisters were in animated converse on the
other side of the room.

"Yes," his aunt proceeded; "you are old enough to think about marrying.
You don't know how pleasant it would be to have a nice little home of
your own, and your own little wifey to meet you every evening with a
kiss!"

"Dear, dear!" thought Truesdale to himself; "and now she's singing that
song to _me_!" He remembered these familiar strains; they had been
directed many a time and oft to the ear of his brother Roger. Year by
year their plaintive poignancy had grown more acute, along with Roger's
strengthening determination to remain a bachelor.

Truesdale found himself wondering whether his aunt's intense allegiance
to the idea of married life was the sincere expression of a nature
overflowingly affectionate, or a species of sensitive dissimulation
cloaking a disappointment which, by this time, might well have come to be
numbered among the bygones. For it was now six years since Alfred Rhodes,
the gay, the genial, had died. He had cost his wife many anxious moments
and a few sleepless nights. He had left her a moderate fortune, an ample
freedom, and a boy of eight. She had increased her freedom by sending the
boy off to an Eastern school. He visited Eastern relatives during
vacation time, and was doomed to a longer course of knickerbockers than
it would have pleased him to forecast. His mother's heart still
palpitated youthfully; she showed herself in no haste to take her stand
in the ranks of the elder generation.

"Yes," Mrs. Rhodes proceeded, "you must get into business, and then we
shall have to find some nice girl for you."