Things

								

person, too--a man whose forebears had been more like fairy god-parents
than ordinary ancestors, for they had given him a handsome, healthy
body, a fair fortune, a respected name, and, best of all, an
unquestioning belief in all the institutions of his own time, such as
matrimony, the ten commandments, and the blessings of paternity.
Despard turned the conversation toward the daughter, but was soon aware
that he was getting a mere echo of Mrs. Royce’s opinions.
“The child has worked herself into an abnormal frame of mind,” said her
father.
“You draw this from your own observations?”
“Well, more from her mother’s. I leave that sort of thing to my wife.
She has great cares, great responsibilities. She takes life almost too
seriously.” He sighed. The next instant his face lighted up in pointing
out to Despard a giant chestnut-tree just saved from a blighting
disease. For a few minutes he spoke on the subject with extraordinary
vividness.
Despard was quick to recognize expert knowledge, and Royce, with
something approaching a blush, admitted that he did understand the care
of native trees. “I have sometimes thought of writing a book about it,”
he said timidly.
“You certainly should.”
“Ah, it’s so difficult to find time.”
Despard smiled. Who had leisure if this favored being had not? He
himself, without one hour in the twenty-four that he could call his
own, was already at work on his third.
He met the whole family assembled at luncheon: a pale German governess,
three little boys, and the dark-eyed Celia, sweet-mouthed but
sullen-browed.
Despard, who had had no breakfast, thought more than he would have
confessed about the victuals set before him. Any family ought to be
amiable, he thought, on food at once so simple and delicious. His
opinion of Mrs. Royce rose still higher.
Within the next hour he came to the conclusion that, in spite of his
extended knowledge of American interiors, he had never before been in
a really well-appointed house--a house, that is, where one wise and
affectionate person directed every detail. Mrs. Royce, he found, knew
every aspect of her home. She not only knew her flowers almost as
individuals, but she knew the vase and the place where each appeared
to the best advantage. She knew better than her husband which chair he
liked, where he kept his cigars, and which little table would be best
at his elbow. Nor was her consideration confined to her own family. She
had thought of a tired doctor’s special needs. She had given him “a
little room, where he could be quiet and get a glimpse of the river.”
Shut in this room, not so very little after all, he walked to the
writing-table to make a memorandum. It had more than once happened to
him to find, in a house accounted luxurious, only a dry, encrusted
inkstand in the spare room. Not so here. Never was ink so fluidly,
greenly new; never was blotting-paper so eagerly absorbent. He noticed,