Her husband, with all his industry and the fine talents she knew him to possess, was making no more money at forty-seven than he had made at thirty-five. She was a little bewildered to find that socially she had gradually lost contact with the old aristocracy without catching step with the flourishing makers of brick and other articles of commerce that were carrying the fame of Kernville into new territory. And as Mrs. Ward was possessed of a pardonable pride, this situation troubled her greatly. They had been unable to send John to the Harvard Law School, but he had made a fine record in the school of the state university, and his name now appeared beneath his father’s on the door of the law office on the second floor of the old Wheatley block, which had been pretty well deserted by tenants now that Kernville boasted a modern ten-story office building. John Ward was a healthy, sanguine young fellow who had every intention of getting on. Some of the friends he had made in law school threw him some business, and it was remarked about the courthouse that John had more punch than his father, and was bound to succeed. Half way through the trial of a damage suit in which the firm of Ward & Ward represented a plaintiff who had been run down by an inter-urban car, the senior Ward was laid up with tonsilitis, and John carried the case through and won a verdict for twice what the plaintiff had been led to believe he could possibly get. Helen Ward was quite as admirable and interesting as her brother. The finishing school had done her no harm and she returned to Kernville without airs, assumptions or affectations, understanding perfectly that her parents had done the best they could for her. She was nineteen, tall and straight, fair, with an abundance of brown hair and blue-gray mirthful eyes. The growing inability of her mother to maintain a maid-of-all work, now that Kernville’s eligibles for domestic service preferred the eight-hour day of the factories to house work, did not trouble Helen particularly. She could cook, wash, iron, cut out a dress and sew it together and if the furniture was wobbly and the upholstery faded she was an artist with the glue-pot and her linen covers on the chairs gave the parlor a fresh smart look. The humor that was denied their parents was Helen’s and John’s portion in large measure. They were of the Twentieth Century, spoke its language and knew all its signs and symbols. They were proud of each other, shared their pleasures and consoled each other in their disappointments, and resolutely determined to make the best of a world that wasn’t such a bad place after all. John reached home from the office on a day early in January and found Helen preparing supper. “Great scott, sis; has that last girl faded already!”