It terrified him to think that the half-crazed old mother had the franchise of Tuliptree Farm for this day, since there was never a soul left on the place to prevent her wandering about. What if she chose the opportunity to visit the home where she had never been invited to call? Just to see how her betters lived, she might climb in at a window and wander about the rooms. He saw her in his fancy gasping at the simple things that would be splendor to her pauper’s eye. What if the blood of her son should cry aloud to her like Abel’s from the ground, and draw her to the cellar? What if she should see through the clumsy disguise of spiderwebs and begin tearing at the foundation stones with those old hen’s-claw fingers of hers? It was a ridiculous image to be afraid of, but RoBards could not banish it. CHAPTER XXIII The children had apparently forgotten all about the tragedy. The newness of the train-ride, the fear of missing something, of being late somewhere, of not being everywhere at once, kept their little minds so avid that there was no thought of yesterday. They entered the city as if they were wading into the boisterous surf at Rockaway Beach. The crowds broke about them with a din of breakers thundering shoreward. Yet they were not afraid. When they descended from the train at the station, RoBards could hardly keep them in leash long enough to get them into a hack. As it bounced across the town to St. John’s Park, he had only their backs and heels for company. Each child hung across a door and stared at the hurrying mobs. At length they reached the home and all their thoughts were forward. Nothing that had ever happened in the country could pit itself against the revelry of the city. Their young and pretty mother looked never so New Yorkish as when she ran down the front stoop to welcome them. When she cried the old watchword, “How have you been?” they answered heedlessly, “All right!” Immy, of all people, answered, “All right!” Even RoBards forgot for the brief paradise of embracing his gracious wife that everything was all wrong. She had to take him about the house and show him the improvements she had made, especially the faucet in the kitchen for the Croton water when it should come gurgling through the pipes. From a parlor window she pointed with delicious snobbery to the hydrant at the edge of the front porch. Most marvelous of all was a shower-bath that she had had installed upstairs. It would be possible to bathe every day! There was something irreligious and Persian about the apparatus, but RoBards rejoiced for a moment in the thought of what musical refreshment it would afford him on hot mornings after long nights of work. The children were so impatient to get them gone that they had hardly a glance to spare at the new toys, the faucets and hydrants, the municipal playthings which would prevent fires in the future or at least make the life of a fireman a pastime instead of a vain slavery.