“It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it,” Tony exploded; “why don't you loosen up and get a real car?” “I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow.” “There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam.” “You are the most shiftless young dog in the county,” the other told him in kindlier tones; “why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?” Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp. The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples, solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the gaunt skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale stars. The aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser gloom, filled with the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about the white marble steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of coolness; beyond, from the garden shut from the street by an intricate, rusting iron fence, he heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. Evidently there was a visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, intent upon passing without notice to his room above. But Ellie had been watching for him, and called before he had reached the foot of the stairs. IV HE made his way diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where he saw his sister, a glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown garden, conversing with a figure without form or detail, by a trellis sagging beneath a verdurous weight. “Oh, Tony!” she called; “here's Mrs. Dreen.” He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. “I didn't know you were back from France,” he told the indistinct woman before him. “But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons,” a delicate, rounded voice rejoined, “and you should have guessed that we would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie,” she turned to the girl, “you have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has given the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his own acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and his late _déjeuner._ And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a gardener, planning flowerbeds.” Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although he had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained a pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings. “How is Eliza?” he asked politely, and with no inward interest; “she must be a regular beauty by now.”