I would begin by taking a much smaller house and letting half the servants go, including my French cook.  I had for a long time realized that we all ate too much.  I would give up one of my motors and entertain more simply.  We would omit the spring dash to Paris, and I would insist on a certain number of evenings each week which the family should spend together, reading aloud or talking over their various plans and interests.  It did not seem by any means impossible in the prospect and I got a considerable amount of satisfaction from planning it all out.  My life was to be that of a sort of glorified Hastings.  After my healthy, peaceful day in the quiet country I felt quite light-hearted—­as nearly happy as I could remember having been for years.

It was raining when I got out at the Grand Central Station, and as I hurried along the platform to get a taxi I overtook an acquaintance of mine—­a social climber.  He gave me a queer look in response to my greeting and I remembered that I had on the old gray hat I had taken from the quick lunch.

“I’ve been off for a tramp in the country,” I explained, resenting my own instinctive embarrassment.

“Ah!  Don’t say!  Didn’t know you went in for that sort of thing!  Well, good night!”

He sprang into the only remaining taxi without asking me to share it and vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke.  I was in no mood for waiting; besides I was going to be democratic.  I took a surface car up Lexington Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent Italian gentleman for thirty blocks.  The car was intolerably stuffy and smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic.  By the time I reached the cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour.  I turned up my coat collar and ran to my house.

Somehow I felt like a small boy as I threw myself panting inside my own marble portal.  My butler expressed great sympathy for my condition and smuggled me quickly upstairs.  I fancy he suspected there was something discreditable about my absence.  A pungent aroma floated up from the drawing room, where the bridge players were steadily at work.  I confess to feeling rather dirty, wet and disreputable.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said my butler as he turned on the electric switch in my bedroom, “but I didn’t expect you back this evening, and so I told Martin he might go out.”

A wave of irritation, almost of anger, swept over me.  Martin was my perfect valet.

“What the devil did you do that for!” I snapped.

Then, realizing my inconsistency, I was ashamed, utterly humiliated and disgusted with myself.  This, then, was all that my resolution amounted to after all!

“I am very sorry, sir,” repeated my butler.  “Very sorry, sir, indeed.  Shall I help you off with your things?”

“Oh, that’s all right!” I exclaimed, somewhat to his surprise.  “Don’t bother about me.  I’ll take care of myself.”