Part 33 (1/2)

” But * * one doesn't look for model men these days.”

”'Who told you he made fifteen thousand a year?

asked the professor.

”It was Peter Tounley this morning. We were talking upstairs after breakfast, and he remarked that he if could make fifteen thousand, a year: like Coleman, he'd-I've forgotten what-some fanciful thing.”

” I doubt if it is true,” muttered the old man wagging his head.

”Of course it's true,” said his wife emphatically.

” Peter Tounley says everybody knows it.”

Well * anyhow * money is not everything.”

But it's a. great deal, you know well enough. You know you are always speaking of poverty as an evil, as a grand resultant, a collaboration of many lesser evils. Well, then?

” But,” began the professor meekly, when I say that I mean-”

” Well, money is money and poverty is poverty,”

interrupted his wife. ” You don't have to be very learned to know that.”

”I do not say that Coleman has not a very nice thing of it, but I must say it is hard to think of his getting any such sum, as you mention.”

” Isn't he known as the most brilliant journalist in New York?” she demanded harshly.

” Y-yes, as long as it lasts, but then one never knows when he will be out in the street penniless.

Of course he has no particular ability which would be marketable if he suddenly lost his present employment.

Of course it is not as if he was a really talented young man.

He might not be able to make his way at all in any new direction.”

” I don't know about that,” said Mrs. Wainwright in reflective protestation. ” I don't know about that.

I think he would.”

” I thought you said a moment ago-” The professor spoke with an air of puzzled hesitancy. ”I thought you said a moment ago that he wouldn't succeed in anything but journalism.”

Mrs. Wainwright swam over the situation with a fine tranquility. ” Well-I-I,” she answered musingly, ”if I did say that, I didn't mean it exactly.”

” No, I suppose not,” spoke the professor, and de- spite the necessity for caution he could not keep out of his voice a faint note of annoyance.

” Of course,” continued the wife, ” Rufus Coleman is known everywhere as a brilliant man, a very brilliant man, and he even might do well in-in politics or something of that sort.”

” I have a very poor opinion of that kind of a mind which does well in American politics,” said the pro- fessor, speaking as a collegian, ” but I suppose there may be something in it.”

” Well, at any rate,” decided Mrs. Wainwright.

” At any rate-”

At that moment, Marjory attired for luncheon and the drive entered from her room, and Mrs. Wainwright checked the expression of her important conclusion.

Neither father or mother had ever seen her so glowing with triumphant beauty, a beauty which would carry the mind of a spectator far above physical appreciation into that realm of poetry where creatures of light move and are beautiful because they cannot know pain or a burden. It carried tears to the old father's eyes. He took her hands. ” Don't be too happy, my child, don't be too happy,” he admonished her tremulously. ” It makes me afraid-it makes me afraid.”

CHAPTER x.x.x

IT seems strange that the one who was the most hilarious over the engagement of Marjory and Cole- man should be Coleman's dragoman who was indeed in a state bordering on transport. It is not known how he learned the glad tidings, but it is certain that he learned them before luncheon. He told all the visible employes of the hotel and allowed them to know that the betrothal really had been his handi-work He had arranged it. He did not make quite clear how he had performed this feat, but at least he was perfectly frank in acknowledging it.