Quin

								

of his time being spent at home in the arduous task of writing tragedies
in blank verse.
"What I got to think about is a job," said Quin, much more interested in
his own affairs than in those of his host.
"Commercial or professional?" inquired Mr. Martel.
"Oh, I can turn my hand to 'most anything," bragged Quin, blowing
smoke-rings at the ceiling. "It's experience that counts, and, believe
me, I've had a plenty."
"Experience plus education," added Mr. Martel; "we must not underestimate
the advantages of education."
"That's where I'm short," admitted Quin. "My folks were all smart enough.
Guess if they had lived I'd been put through college and all the rest of
it. My grandfather was Dr. Ezra Quinby. Ever hear of him?"
Mr. Martel had to acknowledge that he had not.
"Guess he is better known in China than in America," said Quin. "He died
before I was born."
"And you have no people in America?"
"No people anywhere," said Quin cheerfully; "but I got a lot of friends
scattered around over the world, and a bull-dog and a couple of cats up
at a lumber-camp near Portland."
"Cassius tells me that you are thinking of returning to Maine."
Quin ran his fingers through his hair and laughed. "That was yesterday,"
he said. "To-day you couldn't get me out of Kentucky with a machine-gun!"
Claude Martel rose and laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder. "Then,
my boy, we claim you as our own. Cassius' home is your home, his family
your family, his----"
The address of welcome was cut short by Cass's arrival with an armful of
wood which he deposited on the hearth, and a moment later the girls,
followed by Edwin, came trooping in from the kitchen.
"Let's make a circle round the fire and sing the old year out," suggested
Rose gaily. "Myrna, get the banjo and the guitar. Shall I play on the
piano, Papa Claude, or will you?"
Mr. Martel, expressing the noble sentiment that age should always be an
accompaniment to youth, took his place at the piano and, with a pose
worthy of Rubinstein, struck a few preliminary chords, while the group
about the fire noisily settled itself for the evening.
"You can put your head against my knees, if you like," Rose said to Quin,
who was sprawling on the floor at her feet. "There, is that comfy?"
"I'll say it's all right!" said Quin with heartfelt satisfaction.
There was something free and easy and gipsy-like about the evening, a
sort of fireside picnic that brought June dreams in January. As the hours
wore on, the singing, which had been noisy and rollicking, gradually
mellowed into sentiment, a sentiment that found vent in dreamy eyes and
long-drawn-out choruses, with a languorous over-accentuation of the
sentimental passages. One by one, the singers fell under the spell of the
music and the firelight. Cass and Fan Loomis sat shoulder to shoulder on
the broken-springed couch and gazed with blissful oblivion into the red
embers on the hearth. Rose, whose voice led all the rest, surreptitiously