Jewel Weed

Lena had said such things before. Dick began to revolve plans for a

larger kindness, and, in his slow masculine intellect, fancied that it

was all his own idea to try and bring this small person into contact

with those who would appreciate her and with whom she could be

happy,--for of course Lena herself was quite submissive to her lot.

To Dick's friends this long summer dawdled itself away much as the

previous one had done. There were the same week-ends at the lake, with

Dick more full of vivacity than ever, Ellery growing more certain of

himself, Madeline rounding slowly out of girlhood into womanhood. Yet

there was a difference. Half a dozen Sundays, when Percival was too

busy, Ellery, half-irritated with his friend, half-exultant in his

desertion, spent the quiet afternoons à deux with Madeline.

It seemed to Norris that some indefinable change was coming over Dick.

At times he was vivid, even fantastic, and again he lapsed into erratic

silences out of which he came at new and unexpected points. He developed

ideas that appeared to his friend not quite in keeping with the sterling

Dick of old. He was less sensitive, so thought Ellery, in his code of

honor as he saw more and more of the crooked ways of men. Once Norris

met him walking with one of the cheaper aldermen, and he wore a

duplicate--in gilt--of the alderman's walk and swagger. He talked

politics and reform, but with less emphasis on his ideals and more on

the game, which seemed to mean the fun of catching the rascals

red-handed and turning them out.

Madeline, as Ellery studied her, was unaware of any change either in

Dick himself or in his attitude toward her. It was like her to be above

suspicions or small jealousies.

So summer slipped into October, and there came a month of lovely days.

Winter, after a feint, slunk into hiding again, and the only result of

his excursion was a more splendid red on the maples, a more glowing

russet on the oaks. Indian summer reigned in his stead, flinging

broadcast her gorgeous colors and her melting mellowness. That men might

not surfeit of her sweets, she tempered her daytime prodigality of heat

by nights of frost. People were coming back to town, a few, very few, in

velvet gowns, but mostly in rags and anxious about their autumn

wardrobes; and yet these were days to make one long, as one does in

spring, for the smell of the good brown earth and the sniff of untainted

country air. The atmosphere was full of glowing warmth that penetrated

to the heart and made every face on the street reflect some of its

delight; for autumn with her thousand charms and witcheries was proving

that she died, not from gray old age, but in the fullness of her prime.