“Of course,” Mrs. Tweksbury replied, “no one appreciates more than I do, Ken, your moral fibre.  It’s a big thing for you to create a business if for no other reason than to give employment to less fortunate young men; but you have other responsibilities.  Your position, your fortune, they make demands.  I’m not one to underestimate the leisure class; I know the old joke about tramps being the only leisure class in America; it’s a silly joke, but it ought to make us think.  After a bit, if we don’t look out, the leisure class, here, will be all women.  They’ll dominate art and poetry and society—­and I must say I like a good team.  I never cared for too much of any one thing.  Ken?”

“Yes, Aunt Emily.”

“I want you to marry and have—­a place.”

“A place, Aunt Emily?” Raymond looked puzzled.

“Yes.  Make a stand for American aristocracy—­though of course you must call it by another name.  You’re a clean, splendid chap—­I know all about you.  I’ve watched apart and prayed over you in my closet.  You see your father and I made a ghastly mess of our lives, but we kept to the code—­for your sake.  We left your path clear, thank God!”

“Yes, Aunt Emily—­I’ve thanked God for that, too, in what stands for my closet.”

“What stands for your closet, Ken?  I’ve always wanted to know what takes the place of women’s sanctuaries in the lives of men.”

Raymond plunged his hands into his pockets—­he and Mrs. Tweksbury had just finished breakfast, and the dining room of the old-fashioned house opened, as it should, to the east.

“Oh!  I don’t know that I can tell you, Aunt Emily,” Raymond fidgeted.  “Fellows are beginning to think a bit more about the clean places in women’s lives.  I reckon that we haven’t so much an idea about sanctuaries of ours as that we are cultivating an honest-to-God determination to keep from making wrecks of women’s shrines.  I know this sounds blithering, but, you see, a decent chap wants to ask some girl to give him a better thing than forgiveness when the time comes.  He wants to cut out the excuse business.  He doesn’t want women like you to be ashamed of him—­when they come where they have to call things by their right names.”

“Ken, I don’t believe you’re in good form.  You’d much better come up to Maine!”

Emily Tweksbury looked as if she wanted to cry; her expression was so comical that Raymond laughed aloud.

“I’ll come in August,” he said at last.  “I’ll take the whole month and frivol with you.”

Mrs. Tweksbury was, however, not through with what she had to say.  She looked at the big, handsome fellow across the room and he seemed suddenly to become very young and helpless, very much needing guidance, and yet she knew how he would resent any such interference in his life.

“What’s on your mind, Aunt Emily?”

Raymond had turned the tables—­he smiled down upon the old lady with the masterful tenderness of youth.