Still he had swallowed his foolish pride and been really very nice about it after she got the business started.  Now he was always telling her to be sure and set a good table.  He said if you were going to do a thing, even if it was only keeping a boarding house, to do it well.  That was his motto—­do it well or don’t do it at all!  So she was buying the best cuts of meats and all fresh vegetables because of his strict ideas in this matter, and it didn’t look as if they’d ever really make a fortune at it—­to say nothing of there being more persons than I’d believe that had hard luck and got behind in their payments, and of course one couldn’t be stern to the poor unfortunates.

I listened to this chatter till it seemed about time to ask what business Clyde had took up.  It seemed that right at the moment he was disengaged.  It further seemed that he had been disengaged at most other moments since he had stooped to this marriage with a daughter of the people.  I mustn’t think it was the poor boy’s fault, though.  He was willing at all times to accept a situation and sometimes would get so depressed that he’d actually look for work.  Twice he had found it, but it proved to be something confining in an office where the hours were long and conditions far from satisfactory.

That’s how she put it, with glowing eyes and flushed cheeks:  “It proved to be mere dull routine work not in the least suited to darling Clyde’s talents and the conditions were far from satisfactory.  I had the hardest time prevailing on him to give the nasty old places up and wait patiently for a suitable opening.  He was quite impatient with me when he consented—­but, of course, he’s only a boy of twenty-four, a whole year younger than I am.  I tell him every day a suitable opening is bound to occur very soon.  You see, he had so many grand friends, people of the right sort that are wealthy.  I insist on his meeting them constantly.  Just think; only last week he spent Saturday and Sunday at one of the biggest country houses on Long Island, and had such a good time.  He’s a prime favourite with a lot of people like that and they’re always having him to dine or to the opera or to their balls and parties.  I miss him horribly, of course, and the poor dear misses me, but I tell him it will surely lead to something.  His old college chums all love him too—­a boy makes so many valuable friends in college, don’t you think?  A lot of them try to put things in his way.  I couldn’t bear to have him accept a situation unworthy of him—­I know it would kill him.  Why, he wilts like a flower under the least depression.”

Well, I set and listened to a long string of this—­and not a word for me to say.  What could any one of said?  Wasn’t it being told to me by the happiest woman I ever set eyes on?  Yes, sir; I’d never believe how gentle natured the boy was.  Why, that very morning, being worried about something that went wrong with breakfast, which she had to turn out at five A. M. to get started hadn’t