good and buying bad.  He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers and read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained milkers milked her dry and then ate her.  He sold the office-building and the house in town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then he sold the farm, except the house and the ground about it, to pay the taxes on the suburban lots and to “keep them up.”  The lots refused to stay up; but he had to do something to keep himself and his family up, so in despair he sold the lots (which went up beautifully the next year) for “traction stock” that was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased to buy and sell.  Thus he disappeared altogether from the commercial surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top; and Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her “anti-smoke” committee, had never heard the name.

Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees “managed somehow” on the dividends, though “managing” became more and more difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less.  But there came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took greedy counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long after that there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees.  In fact, there was nothing for Mr. Vertrees, because the “traction stock” henceforth was no stock at all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help “manage somehow” according to his conception of his “position in life”—­one of his own old-fashioned phrases.  Six months before the completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses and the worn Victoria and “station-wagon,” to pay the arrears of his two servants and re-establish credit at the grocer’s and butcher’s—­and a pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very ample barter, in these days, for six months’ food and fuel and service.  Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in all the buzzing city—­he could do nothing.

It may be said that he was at the end of his string.  Such times do come in all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if his feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.

The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone of firelight.  But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went ringing through the house.  Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.

She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes.  Mrs. Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary, she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite certain to agree with her, and regretted it.