“I guess nothing but New York will be good enough for Hugh now.  He’ll be taking Cousin Sarah away from us.”

“Not at all, my dear,” said my mother, gently, “he’s going into Mr. Watling’s office next autumn.”

“Theodore Watling?” demanded Cousin Robert, pausing in his carving.

“Yes, Robert.  Mr. Watling has been good enough to say that he would like to have Hugh.  Is there anything—?”

“Oh, I’m out of date, Sarah,” Cousin Robert replied, vigorously severing the leg of the turkey.  “These modern lawyers are too smart for me.  Watling’s no worse than the others, I suppose,—­only he’s got more ability.”

“I’ve never heard anything against him,” said my mother in a pained voice.  “Only the other day McAlery Willett congratulated me that Hugh was going to be with him.”

“You mustn’t mind Robert, Sarah,” put in Cousin Jenny,—­a remark reminiscent of other days.

“Dad has a notion that his generation is the only honest one,” said Helen, laughingly, as she passed a plate.

I had gained a sense of superiority, and I was quite indifferent to Cousin Robert’s opinion of Mr. Watling, of modern lawyers in general.  More than once a wave of self-congratulation surged through me that I had possessed the foresight and initiative to get out of the wholesale grocery business while there was yet time.  I looked at Willie, still freckled, still literal, still a plodder, at Walter Kinley, and I thought of the drabness of their lives; at Cousin Robert himself as he sat smoking his cigar in the bay-window on that dark February day, and suddenly I pitied him.  The suspicion struck me that he had not prospered of late, and this deepened to a conviction as he talked.

“The Republican Party is going to the dogs,” he asserted.

“It used to be an honourable party, but now it is no better than the other.  Politics are only conducted, now, for the purpose of making unscrupulous men rich, sir.  For years I furnished this city with good groceries, if I do say it myself.  I took a pride in the fact that the inmates of the hospitals, yes, and the dependent poor in the city’s institutions, should have honest food.  You can get anything out of the city if you are willing to pay the politicians for it.  I lost my city contracts.  Why?  Because I refused to deal with scoundrels.  Weill and Company and other unscrupulous upstarts are willing to do so, and poison the poor and the sick with adulterated groceries!  The first thing I knew was that the city auditor was holding back my bills for supplies, and paying Weill’s.  That’s what politics and business, yes, sir, and the law, have come to in these days.  If a man wants to succeed, he must turn into a rascal.”

I was not shocked, but I was silent, uncomfortable, wishing that it were time to take the train back to the city.  Cousin Robert’s face was more worn than I had thought, and I contrasted him inevitably with the forceful person who used to stand, in his worn alpaca coat, on the pavement in front of his store, greeting with clear-eyed content his fellow merchants of the city.  Willie Breck, too, was silent, and Walter Kinley took off his glasses and wiped them.  In the meanwhile Helen had left the group in which my mother sat, and, approaching us, laid her hands on her father’s shoulders.