Produced by K Nordquist, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE INNOCENTS BOOKS BY SINCLAIR LEWIS THE INNOCENTS THE JOB THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK OUR MR. WRENN HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK [ESTABLISHED 1817] [Illustration: THE INNOCENTS] THE INNOCENTS A STORY FOR LOVERS BY SINCLAIR LEWIS AUTHOR OF "THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK" "THE JOB" ETC. HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON THE INNOCENTS Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published October, 1917 F-R A DEDICATORY INTRODUCTION If this were a ponderous work of realism, such as the author has attempted to write, and will doubtless essay again, it would be perilous to dedicate it to the splendid assembly of young British writers, lest the critics search for Influences and Imitations. But since this is a flagrant excursion, a tale for people who still read Dickens and clip out spring poetry and love old people and children, it may safely confess the writer's strident admiration for Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole, Oliver Onions, D. H. Lawrence, J. D. Beresford, Gilbert Cannan, Patrick MacGill, and their peers, whose novels are the histories of our contemporaneous Golden Age. Nor may these be mentioned without a yet more enthusiastic tribute to their master and teacher (he probably abominates being called either a master or a teacher), H. G. Wells. THE INNOCENTS CHAPTER I Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby were almost old. They called each other "Father" and "Mother." But frequently they were guilty of holding hands, or of cuddling together in corners, and Father was a person of stubborn youthfulness. For something over forty years Mother had been trying to make him stop smoking, yet every time her back was turned he would sneak out his amber cigarette-holder and puff a cheap cigarette, winking at the shocked crochet tidy on the patent rocker. Mother sniffed at him and said that he acted like a young smart Aleck, but he would merely grin in answer and coax her out for a walk. As they paraded, the sun shone through the fuzzy, silver hair that puffed out round Father's crab-apple face, and an echo of delicate silver was on Mother's rose-leaf cheeks.