This charitable moment passed.  He recalled the little moonlit drama on the embowered veranda, when Julia, in her voice of plucked harp strings, told him that he smoked too much, and he had said it didn’t matter; nobody would care much if he died—­and Julia said gently that his mother would, and other people, too; he mustn’t talk so recklessly.  Out of this the old eavesdropper had viciously represented him to be a poser, not really reckless at all; had insulted his cigarettes and his salary.  Well, Noble would show him!  He had doubts about being able to show Mr. Atwater anything important connected with the cigarettes or the salary, but he could prove how reckless he was.  With that, a vision formed before him:  he saw Julia and her father standing spellbound at a crossing while a smiling youth stood directly between the rails in the middle of the street and let a charging trolley-car destroy him—­not instantly, for he would live long enough to whisper, as the stricken pair bent over him:  “Now, Julia, which do you believe:  your father, or me?” And then with a slight, dying sneer:  “Well, Mr. Atwater, is this reckless enough to suit you?”

* * * * *

Town squirrels flitted along their high paths in the shade-tree branches above the embittered young lover, and he noticed them not at all, which was but little less than he noticed the elderly human couple who observed him from a side-yard as he passed by.  Mr. and Mrs. Burgess had been happily married for fifty-three years and four months.  Mr. Burgess lay in a hammock between two maple trees, and was soothingly swung by means of a string connecting the hammock and the rocking-chair in which sat Mrs Burgess, acting as a mild motor for both the chair and the hammock.  “That’s Noble Dill walking along the sidewalk,” Mrs. Burgess said, interpreting for her husband’s failing eyes.  “I bowed to him, but he hardly seemed to see us and just barely lifted his hat.  He needn’t be cross with us because some other young man’s probably taking Julia Atwater out driving!”

“Yes, he need!” Mr. Burgess declared.  “A boy in his condition needs to be cross with everything.  Sometimes they get so cross they go and drink liquor.  Don’t you remember?”

She laughed.  “I remember once!” she assented, and laughed again.

“Why, it’s a terrible time of life,” her husband went on.  “Poets and suchlike always take on about young love as if it were a charming and romantic experience, but really it’s just a series of mortifications.  The young lover is always wanting to do something dashing and romantic and Sir Walter Raleigh-like, but in ordinary times about the wildest thing he can do, if he can afford it, is to learn to run a Ford.  And he can’t stand a word of criticism; he can’t stand being made the least little bit of fun of; and yet all the while his state of mind lays him particularly open to all the things he can’t stand.  He can’t stand anything, and he has to stand everything.  Why, it’s a horrible time of life, mamma!”