"Don't you dare to call me that, Monty Huntington!" Marian exclaimed vehemently. "If I am to go through life with a son-in-law older than I am, at least I won't be called 'mamma'!"

"I'm trying to be respectful," Huntington explained mischievously.

"Never you mind that,--call me 'Marian.' That at least will give me the benefit of the doubt."

"I'm sorry to mark my entrance into the family by causing mortification," Huntington continued in mock-seriousness. "It never occurred to me, if my prospective wife made no objections, that my age would be offensive to her parents. But the case isn't so serious as Ned Fordham's, is it?"

"He married Mrs. Eustis, didn't he?"

"Yes; and you remember that she has a married daughter and a small grandchild. Ned said the idea of a ready-made family was fine, but he thought it immoral for him to become a grandfather before he became a father."

"Rather late for him to come to that conclusion, wasn't it?" Thatcher laughed.

"Yes; but he found two other men in the same predicament, so the three of them have formed a 'Society of Illegitimate Grandparents,' and now they're looking for more members."

"Ned would joke at his own funeral!" chuckled Thatcher.

"It isn't your age I'm objecting to," Marian explained; "it's my own.

Merry's engagement makes me realize it."

"She and I are going to make you forget that you have any age at all,"

Huntington declared.--"But when you interrupted me I was going to speak of a really important matter.--We mustn't be unmindful of poor Hamlen."

"No, indeed," Marian replied seriously. "Happiness is selfish, isn't it, in making us temporarily forgetful? Poor Philip!"

"We are doing him no injustice," he rea.s.sured her; "in fact I think the news I can take will please him. But I want you and Merry to go back to Boston with me."

"Whatever you think is wise shall be done," she acquiesced, "but wouldn't it be better for you to go ahead to prepare him for our coming?"

"That is by far the wiser plan," Huntington a.s.sented promptly.

"Take me with you, Monty," Merry whispered; "I wish we never need be separated again."

"Stay here, sweetheart, and plan out with the dear mother how soon that day may be. I have been waiting too long already!"

The nurse met Huntington as he entered the door, and replied to the question his face asked sooner than his lips.

"There is a remarkable improvement," she announced cheerfully. "The doctor was here this morning, and left word for you that the progress is beyond his understanding."

"Splendid!" he cried. "Where shall I find Hamlen?

"In the library, Mr. Huntington; it is all I can do to persuade him to go anywhere else."

Huntington mounted the stairs two steps at time. "Hamlen!" he cried, "where are you?"

"Here!" a well-contained voice replied as he entered the room, "in your library, sitting in your favorite chair, eating your food, drinking your rum--in short, exercising every prerogative a man can a.s.sume who has unfettered himself from worldly responsibilities, and awaits the command of his master."

"You certainly are better," Huntington exclaimed, looking at him critically, astonished by the tone of his remark.

"Except for my weakness," Hamlen answered, holding out his hand, "better than I've been in all my life."

"You amaze me!" Huntington exclaimed. "I hoped for an improvement, but this return to more than your best self--"

"I've fought the fight, my friend, and this is the result."

"It is a positive triumph!" Huntington drew a chair beside the patient, and regarded him with an expression of mystified gratification. "What in the world has happened?"

"You went away and gave me a chance to think," Hamlen replied seriously.

"Do you know, Huntington, I'm convinced that there ought to be a law condemning every human being to solitary confinement for a certain period each year, to make him think. Deprive him of his companions, his books, his writing materials--everything, and just force him to think.

We take things so much for granted, we accept so many half-truths, we so easily lose our sense of proportion."

"That is a capital idea, but you've done your share of it already."

"My thoughts were misdirected. You not only gave me the opportunity but something basic on which to build. I wonder if you realize how pitilessly you laid me bare!"

"I had no intention, my dear fellow--"

"Oh, it was right; that was the very thing which saved me. I was sincere in feeling myself sunk in degradation, in wanting to end it all, and I hated you for standing in my way. But when you laid claim to my life, which I valued so slightly, I began to a.n.a.lyze it to discover why you cared to have it. You have done more for me, Huntington, than any human being ever did for a fellow-creature, and why you did it was past my comprehension."

"We are bound by ties of a great brotherhood," Huntington explained.

"No man I ever saw before has considered them so sacred. You are an idealist, Huntington. Your devotion to college and to college responsibilities amounts to a fetish. But I thank G.o.d for your idealism: it is not what college relations really are but what they ought to be!"

"I never will admit that, Hamlen."

"Of course you won't; if you did you would lose your idealism. I saw all this, and it gave me my explanation: what you have done for me, Huntington, you would have done for any other college man under the same circ.u.mstances. It was not because of any claim the individual had upon you, but rather the acknowledgment of the greater appeal made by that brotherhood you venerate."

"No, Hamlen; you must not depreciate the appeal which your own personality made from the first."

"I don't depreciate it,--I'm proud of it; but to understand your idolatrous worship of the brotherhood makes it possible for me to accept the heavy obligations under which you place me. When you left me I felt that you must hate the sight of my haggard face, the sound of my complaining voice, the burden of silly weakness which I foisted upon your generous shoulders."

"I understood what lay beneath."

"You did, and to a wonderful extent; but it took me hours of bitter fighting to understand. Then the bigness of the great central thing at last came to me, and I recognized it. Sitting here in this chair I cried out in my excitement. The littleness of my own previous viewpoint overwhelmed me, and what had seemed tragedies a.s.sumed at last their smaller proportions. The greatness of your own ideals, the claim which the Alma Mater ought to have upon her sons, the right which the larger world outside has to demand big things of those to whom it gives advantages, made the petty failures of my life so insignificant that I was ashamed to have paraded them in public. I have been lying down on my weaknesses, Huntington, as no man ever has a right to do; but you have seen the last of that. I'll stand up now and take my medicine, I'll pay whatever penalty my latest indiscretion may demand, I'll practise some of that idealism which makes you what you are, and lay the ghost which for years has tortured me with pin-p.r.i.c.ks."

"You give me too much credit, Hamlen," Huntington insisted firmly; "but since you find relief in what I've said or done I rejoice in your exaggeration."

"You claimed my life, my friend," Hamlen returned again to his earlier statement, "and it belongs to you. In all honor, I must make it reflect attributes which will give it value. With that accomplished, I stand ready to make delivery; but with it you must also accept its obligations. How will you have me pay them?"

"Your obligations are not so serious as you imagine," Huntington replied with decision; "the only one as yet unpaid is to yourself. Had I not seen this surprising evidence of your latent strength I should not have believed you capable of meeting it; now I do."

"But Marian--the insult my actions gave her--"

"Forgotten, and forgiven,--if forgiveness be required."

"If I could see her once more, and she would listen to me--"