They were like other fathers and mothers, in some respects, but one difference I noted.  They seemed almost to adore the child, but he was never first with either of them.  He but bound the two more closely together, and the looks of the man were sometimes almost worshipful as he looked upon the mother of his child.  And she—­she understood, and they were glad together.  Their kingdom had been but enlarged.

It is not to be supposed that this whimsical couple—­for they were really whimsical, these friends of mine, as must have appeared often in my account could rear a child without grotesqueries.  The woman, I am afraid, was, before she became a mother, addicted to monkey tricks, even to the extent of bounding leopard-like upon the man from unexpected places, and the Ape was, in his early days, bred in a way barbaric.  They had great times with the Ape.

One day Grant Harlson had his business for the day concluded early.  He could reach home as a little after five o’clock, where dinner came at six.  One of the fiercest of summer rains was falling.  He started buoyantly.  He wanted his wife and boy.

He reached the house and entered.  No wife was there to greet him; no drunken-footed babe, for the Ape had learned to walk now, albeit unsteadily; not even a servant girl to make some explanation.  He stalked through the house wonderingly, back to the kitchen, which looked out upon a green back-yard where they had erected a tent, and had there had dinners and inhaled the odor of the grass.  He found in the kitchen the two girls, who were all delight, and exhibited but slight awe at his presence.  He recognized that all was well, and looked out through the descending sheets of water.

There, beside the quaint tent set upon the green-sward, were two people.  One was a graceful woman, one a sturdy, shouting child.  Neither was garbed save in the simplest way.  She wore a wrap of some sort, a careless thing, the boy a night-gown, and they were moving about in the warm rain and bathing in nature’s way, and particularly happy.

The man was righteously indignant at all desertion of him.  He shouted manfully, and at last attracted the attention of the pair.  He told them to come in to him.  As well have talked to the wild winds.  He looked from the porch upon the riant, dissipated two, and commanded and cajoled and made tremendous threats, but to no purpose.  He reproached his wife with unwifely disobedience, and with the crime of turning her own offspring against his father, and the two but mocked him!  Then he disappeared, and appeared five minutes later in a frayed old swimming suit, and there was terror in the camp of the foe!  He made a charge through sheets of rain, and a fair woman was, in most unmanly way, laid in a puddle, and her son set aloft in pride upon his prostrate and laughing mother.  And high jinks ensued.  So did these two conduct themselves!

But an hour later, when guests came to the dinner, the Ape had gone to his nursery without a whimper, and no more grave and courteous man or more stately and gracious dame sat down at table that evening in all the city of a million people.