Chapter I

The exception that proved Old Chester's rule as to the subjection of Youth was found in the household of Mr. Thomas Dilworth.

When the Dilworth children (at least the two girls) hung about their father when he came home at night or teased and scolded and laughed at him at their friendly breakfast-table, an observer might have thought himself miles away from Old Chester and its well-brought-up Youth. The way those girls talk to Thomas Dilworth! "Where will it end?" said Old Chester, solemnly. For instance, the annual joke in the Dilworth family was that father had been in love with mother for as many years as she was old, less so many minutes.

Now, imagine Old Chester children indulging in such familiarities!

Yet on Mrs. Dilworth's birthday this family witticism was always in order:

"Father, how long have you been mother's beau?"

And Thomas, rosy, handsome, looking at least ten years younger than his Amelia, would say: "Well, let's see: forty-one years" (or two or three, as the case might be), "eleven months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, and forty minutes; she was twenty minutes old when I first laid eyes on her, and during those twenty minutes I was heart-whole."

But Mrs. Dilworth, smiling vaguely behind her coffee-cups, would protest: "I never heard anything about it, Tom, until you were sixteen."

And then the girls would declare that they must be told just what father said when he was sixteen and mother was twelve. But Thomas drew the line at that. "Come! come! you mustn't talk about love-making. As for marrying, I don't mean to let you girls get married at all. And Ned here had better not let me catch him thinking of such nonsense until he's twenty-five. He can get married (if I like the girl) when he is twenty-eight."

"You got married at twenty-two, sir," Edwin demurred.

"If you can find a woman like your mother, you can get married at twenty-two. But you can't. They don't make 'em any more. So you've got to wait. And remember, I've decided not to let Mary and Nancy get married, ever. I don't propose to bring up a brace of long-legged girls, and clothe 'em and feed 'em and pay their doctors' bills, and then, just as they get old enough to amount to anything and quit being nuisances, hand 'em over to another fellow. No, sir! You've got to stay at home with me. Do you understand?"

The girls screamed at this, and flung themselves upon him to kiss him and pull his hair.

No wonder Old Chester was shocked.

Yet, in spite of such happenings, Thomas and Amelia Dilworth were of the real Old Chester. They were not tainted with _newness_--that sad dispensation of Providence which had to be borne by such people as the Macks or the Hayeses, or those very rich (but really worthy) Smiths. The Dilworths were not new; yet their three children had the training--or the lack of training--that made the Hayes children and their kind a subject for Old Chester's prayers.

"Who can say what the result of Milly Dilworth's negligence will be?" Mrs. Drayton said, sighing, to Dr. Lavendar; who only reminded her that folks didn't gather thistles of figs--generally speaking.

But in spite of Dr. Lavendar's optimism, it was a queer household, according to Old Chester lights.... In the first place, the father and mother were more unlike than is generally considered to be matrimonially safe. Amelia was a dear, good soul, but, as Miss Helen Hayes said once, "with absolutely no mind"; while Thomas Dilworth was eminently level-headed, although very fond (so Mrs. Drayton said) of female society. And it must be admitted that Thomas had more than once caused his Milly a slight pang by such fondness. But at least he was never conscious that he had done so--and Milly never told him. (But Mrs. Drayton said that that was something she could not forgive in a married gentleman. "My dear husband," said Mrs. Drayton, "has never wandered from me, even in imagination.") Added to conjugal incongruity was this indifference on the part of Thomas and his wife to the training of the children. The three young Dilworths were allowed to grow up exactly as they pleased. It had worked well enough with Mary and Nancy, who were good girls, affectionate and sensible--so sensible that Nancy, when she was eighteen, had practically taken the housekeeping out of her mother's hands; and Mary, at sixteen, looked out for herself and her affairs most successfully. With Edwin the Dilworth system had not been so satisfactory. He was conceited (though that is only to be expected of the male creature at nineteen) and rather selfish; and he had an unlovely reserve, in which he was strikingly unlike his father, who overflowed with confidences. This, and other unlikeness, was, no doubt, the reason that there were constant small differences between them. And Mrs. Dilworth--vague, gentle soul!--was somehow unable to smooth the differences over as successfully as most mothers do.

Now, smoothing things over is practically a profession to mothers of families. But Milly Dilworth had never succeeded in it. In the first place, she had no gift of words; the more she felt, the more inexpressive she became; but, worst of all, she had, poor woman, not the slightest sense of humor. Now, in dealing with husbands and children (especially with husbands), though you have the tongues of men--which are thought to be more restrained than those of women--and though you have the gift of prophecy (a common gift of wives) and understand all mysteries--say, of housekeeping--and though you give your body to be used up and worn out for their sakes, yet all these things profit you nothing if you have no sense of humor. And Milly Dilworth had none.

That was why she could not understand.

She loved, in her tender, undemonstrative way, her shy, unpractical, secretive Edwin and her two capable girls; she loved, with the single, silent passion of her soul, her generous, selfish, light-hearted Tom, who took her wordless worship as unconsciously and simply as he took the air he breathed; she loved them all. But she did not pretend to understand them. Thus she stood always a little aside, watching and loving, and wondering sometimes in her simple way; but often suffering, as people with no sense of humor are apt to suffer. Dear, dull, gentle Milly! No one could remember a harsh word of hers, or mean deed, or a little judgment. No wonder Dr. Lavendar felt confident that there would be no thistles in her household.

Thomas Dilworth had the same comfortable conviction, especially in regard to his girls. "Now, Milly, honestly," he used to say, "apart from the fact that they are ours, don't you really think they are the nicest girls in Old Chester?"

Milly would admit, in her brief way, that they were good children.

"And Edwin means all right," the father would assure himself; and then add that he couldn't understand their boy--"at least, I suppose he's ours? Willy King says so. I have thought perhaps he was a changeling, put into the cradle the first day."

"But, Tom," Milly would protest, anxiously, "Neddy couldn't be a changeling. He was never out of my sight for the first week--not even to be taken out of the room to be shown to people. Besides, he has your chin and my eyes."

"Well, if you really think so?" Thomas would demur. And Mrs. Dilworth always said, earnestly, that she was sure of it.

Still, in spite of eyes and chin, Ned's unpracticalness was an anxiety to his father, and his uncommunicativeness a constant irritation. Thomas himself was ready to share anything he possessed, money or opinions or hopes, with any friend, almost with any acquaintance. "I don't want to know anybody's business," he used to say; "I'm not inquisitive, Milly; you know I'm not. But I hate hiding things! Why shouldn't he say where he's going when he goes out in the evening? Sneaking off, as if he were ashamed."

"He just doesn't think of it," the mother would say, trying to smooth it over.

"Well, he ought to think of it," the father would grumble, eager to be smoothed.

But Milly found it harder to reconcile her husband to their boy's indifference to business than to his reserves.

"He sees fit to look down on the hardware trade," Tom told his wife, angrily. "'Well, sir,' I said to him the other day, 'it's given you your bread-and-butter for nineteen years; yes--and your fiddle, too, and your everlasting music lessons.' And I'll tell you what, Milly, a man who looks down on his business will find his business looking down on him. And it's a good business--it's a darned good business. If Ned doesn't have the sense to see it, he had better go and play his fiddle and hold out his hat for pennies."

Milly looked anxiously sympathetic.

"I don't know what is going to become of him," Thomas went on. "When you come to provide for three out of the hardware business, nobody gets very much."

Mrs. Dilworth was silent.

"I was talking about him to Dr. Lavendar yesterday, and he said: 'Oh, he'll fall in love one of these days, and he'll see that fiddling won't buy his wife her shoe-strings; then he'll take to the hardware business,' Dr. Lavendar said. It's all very well to talk about his falling in love and taking to business; but if he falls in love, I'll have another mouth to fill. And maybe more," he added, grimly.

"Not for a year, anyway," his wife said, hopefully. "And, besides, I don't think Neddy's thinking of such a thing."

"I hope not, at his age."

"You were engaged when you were nineteen."

"My dear, I wasn't Ned."

Mrs. Dilworth was silent.

"The Packards telegraphed to-day that they wouldn't take that reaper," Tom Dilworth said.

Milly seemed to search for words of sympathy, but before she found them Tom began to talk of something else; he never waited for his wife's replies, or, indeed, expected them. He was so constituted that he had to have a listener; and during all their married life she had listened. When she replied, she was a sounding-board, echoing back his own opinions; when she was silent, he took her silence to mean agreement. Tom used to say that his Milly wasn't one of the smart kind; he didn't like smartness in a woman, anyway; but she had darned good sense;--for, like the rest of us, Thomas Dilworth had a deep belief in the intelligence of the people who agreed with him....

"I have a great mind," he rambled on, "to go up to the Hayeses'. You know that note is due on the 15th, and I believe I'll have to ask him to extend it. I hate to do it, but Packard has upset my calculations, and I'll have to get an extension, or else sell something out; and just now I don't like to do that."

"Very well," she said. It was her birthday--the one day in the year that her Thomas remembered that he had been in love with her for so many years, months, days, hours, minutes--a fact she never for one day in the year forgot. But she could no more have reminded him of the day than she could have flown. She was constitutionally inexpressive.

Tom began to whistle:

but broke off to say, "Well, since you advise it, I'll see Hayes"; then he gave her a kiss, and immediately forgot her--as completely as he had forgotten his supper or any other comfortable and absolutely necessary thing. Then he lighted his cigar and started for the Hayeses'.