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of the most precious of all babies. When gangplanks were lowered and the family procession

came down, she took the soft warm bundle in her arms, and Lanny saw the first tears he had

ever seen in what he had thought were hard, worldly eyes. She refused to put the bundle down,

but carried it off to the waiting car and sat there, breaking every rule which Miss Severne had

laid down for the hygienic and psychological protection of infants. Lanny saw the

Englishwoman watching with disapproval; he feared that a first-class row was pending, for the

head nurse had explained many times that she was a professional person and considered that her

services were superfluous if her advice was disregarded.

They left Feathers to attend to the customs formalities and to bring Irma's maid and the

nursemaid and the bags in another car. The family drove away in state, with Miss Severne in

front with the chauffeur, so that she wouldn't be so aware of a grandmother coddling and

cuddling a fourteen-month-old child, poking a finger at her and talking nonsense. That went

on all the way across Fourteenth Street, and through the slums of New York's East Side, over a

great bridge, and on the new speedway. Lanny recognized what a serious action he had

committed in keeping the precious creature in Europe—and what a fight he was going to have to

get her back there!

Plenty of news to talk about: family affairs, business affairs, and all their friends who had got

married, or died, or been born. Presently Uncle Horace Vandringham was telling Lanny about

stocks. They were down again—very bad news from Germany, and rumors that the trouble might

spread to Britain. The one-time market manipulator gave it as his opinion that prices had just

about reached bottom; the very same words that Robbie Budd had said: "Look where steel is

now!" Uncle Horace had written Irma, begging her to put up a little money, so that he might

get back into the game; he would go fifty-fifty with her—it was a crime to waste the expert

knowledge which he had spent a lifetime in acquiring. Irma had said no, and had told her

husband that she would continue to say it and not let herself be bothered with importunities.

IV

Life at Shore Acres was taken up where it had been left off. The question of Baby Frances was

settled quickly, for the head nurse came to Irma, who had employed her; she didn't say that

Irma had been raised wrong, or that grandmothers were passees, but simply that modern

science had made new discoveries and that she had been trained to put them into practice. Irma

couldn't dream of losing that most conscientious of persons, so she laid down the law to her

mother, who took it with surprising meekness. Likewise, Uncle Horace made only the feeblest

of tentatives in the direction of Wall Street. Lanny perceived that they had had family

consultations; the haughty Fanny was going to be the ideal mother-in-law, her brother was

going to make himself agreeable at all costs, and everybody in the house was to do the same—

in the hope that a prince consort might be persuaded to settle down in his palace and enjoy

that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him.

All that Lanny and his royal spouse had to do was to be happy, and they had the most

expensive toys in the world to play with. The estate had been created for that purpose, and

thousands of skilled workers had applied their labor and hundreds of technicians had applied

their brains to its perfection. If the young couple wanted to ride there were horses, if they

wanted to drive there were cars, if they wanted to go out on the water there were sailboats and

launches. There were two swimming-pools, one indoors and one out, besides the whole

Atlantic Ocean. There were servants to wait upon them and clean up after them; there were

pensioners and courtiers to flatter and entertain them. The world had been so contrived that it

was extremely difficult for the pair to do any sort of useful thing.

Playmates came in swarms: boys and girls of Irma's set who were "lousy with money"—their

own phrase. Irma had romped and danced with them from childhood, and now they were in

their twenties, but lived and felt and thought as if still in their teens. The depression had hit

many of them, and a few had had to drop out, but most were still keeping up the pace. They

drove fast cars, and thought nothing of dining in one place and dancing fifty miles away; they

would come racing home at dawn—one of them would be assigned to drive and would make it

a point of honor not to get drunk. The boys had been to college and the girls to finishing-

schools, where they had acquired fashionable manners, but no ideas that troubled them. Their

conversation was that of a secret society: they had their own slang and private jokes, so that if

you didn't "belong," you had to ask what they were talking about.

It was evident to all that Irma had picked up an odd fish, but they were willing enough to

adopt him; all he had to do was to take them as they were, do what they did, and not try to

force any ideas upon them. He found it interesting for a while; the country was at its

springtime best, the estates of Long Island were elaborate and some of them elegant, and

anybody who is young and healthy enjoys tennis and swimming and eating good food. But

Lanny would pick up the newspaper and read about troubles all over the world; he would go

into the swarming city where millions had no chance to play and not even enough to eat; he

would look at the apple-sellers, and the breadlines of haggard, fear-driven men—many with

clothes still retaining traces of decency. Millions wandering over the land seeking in vain for

work; families being driven from their farms because they couldn't pay the taxes. Lanny wasn't

content to read the regular newspapers, but had to seek out the Pink and Red ones, and then

tell his wealthy friends what he had found there. Not many would believe him, and not one

had any idea what to do about it.

Nobody seemed to have such ideas. The ruling classes of the various nations watched the

breakdown of their economy like spectators in the neighborhood of a volcano, seeing fiery lava

pour out of the crater and dense clouds of ashes roll down the slopes, engulfing vineyards and

fields and cottages. So it had been when the younger Pliny had stood near Mt. Vesuvius some

nineteen hundred years back, and had written to the historian Tacitus about his experience:

"I looked behind me; gross darkness pressed upon our rear, and came rolling over the land

after us like a torrent. We had scarce sat down, when darkness overspread us, not like that of a

moonless or cloudy night, but of a room when it is shut up, and the lamp put out. You could

hear the shrieks of women, the crying of children, and the shouts of men; some were seeking

their children, others their parents, others their wives or husbands, and only distinguishing them

by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some praying to die,

from the very fear of dying; many lifting their hands to the gods; but the great part imagining

that there were no gods left anywhere, and that the last and eternal night was come upon the

world."

V

By way of the automobile ferry from Long Island to New London, Connecticut, Lanny drove

his wife to his father's home, and they spent a week with the family. The town of Newcastle had

been hard hit by the depression: the arms plant was shut down entirely; the hardware and