it the air of bygone days and were grateful for it.

Mrs. Morton had long since laid out her course of life and kept to it. She knew that so long as John felt that he was taking care of her and Ruth, he would stick to his business. She herself was not at all necessary to him; but her pride lay in his strength and ability to succeed. She was deeply afraid he might drift again into the “bohemian life” of aimless study and travel, as she classed his previous lapses into those fields. She could understand being a gentleman of leisure, even approve of it; she could easily accept the life of ceaseless labor and planning of business enterprises, for she had had the example of that in her boy’s father; but she could see nothing in studying for study’s sake, or in a devotion to research for the object of discovery. This might do for eccentric foreigners or crazy college professors; but for a Morton or a Randolph?—Never!

But Ruth had no such compunctions of mind, no