From his medical college at Baltimore Bruce had sent, as succeeding Christmas gifts, an ivory toilet set, a thermos bottle, a reading lamp and a chafing dish.

Terry's offerings on those occasions had been a Japanese kimono embroidered with her favorite flower—a wondrous thing secured by correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish eyes rolled[Pg 9] back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter joy of the world.

[Pg 9]

The rivalry had divided the town into two camps. The pro-Bruce faction, composed largely of men folk, claimed for their protégé a splendid common sense in selection of his gifts: but the women and girls, who made up the other group, envied Deane not only the gifts Terry gave her, but also—and more so—the rarefied romantic spirit of the youth who conceived and offered them.

Deane realized that both Bruce and Terry stayed on in the dull old town principally to be near her. This was true of Bruce particularly, as he was a young surgeon of such promise that he had twice been invited into junior association with Albany's greatest specialist. She had strongly urged him to embrace the increased opportunity for service and profit which the city afforded.

But Terry was only six months out of college, a six months spent in futile effort to adjust himself to the theme of the village, to find appropriate outlet for that urgent desire to be of use in the world which dominated his character. As the Terrys were of those families termed "comfortable" in Crampville, he felt no need of devoting himself to adding to an already ample estate. At his sister's request, he had undertaken to manage a shoe store that represented one of their holdings but at the end of a couple of months had given it up—also in accord with her wishes. Higgins, their old clerk, had come to her with tearful warnings that Terry's unwillingness to refuse credit to any one who came in with a tale of[Pg 10] hard-luck was ruining the business: and Terry had lost the custom of several good families by declining to humor their crotchety unreasonableness.

[Pg 10]

But Higgins did not know how they came to lose the trade of the Hunter family. At the end of a trying day of insistent demand for smaller shoes than feminine feet could accommodate, of viewing bunions and flat arches and wry-jointed toes, he had written Deane:

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