"It's what?" demanded Griggs, moving rapidly away. "Scarlet fever," I groaned. Griggs vanished. "Say, Carton," he called out, from the other side of the door, "awfully sorry. Other kids all safe?" I laughed—a hard metallic laugh—I knew it sounded like that, for I seemed to stand off and listen. Griggs didn't wait to hear more. "Hell!" he ejaculated, and his heavy footsteps pounded the stairs. I thought that was the last of Griggs. It was—for nearly two months. By that time my point of view had changed, as the danger of complications receded, so that I sometimes found myself chuckling over the clever way in which I had managed to rid myself of an insufferable bore. I did not mention the matter to Marion, for I well knew that in some things she was incapable[Pg 71] of judicial consideration, without regard to qualifying circumstances; then, reasoning and argument availed not. An act, she insists, is either right or wrong, therefore it is useless to juggle with words in trying to make out that it is mostly right and only a little wrong. Had Marion developed artistic ability, I am sure it would have been in the line of black and white, while my talent would as surely have run to color. It is the moral in a fable that appeals most strongly to her; it is the fable itself that delights my imagination. A moral is all very well in its place—like a capstone to a tower,—but there it should stay. To detach it for the purpose of concrete personal application, I have explained to Marion, is an outrage on the properties of family life. To choose the moment when a man is smarting under the consciousness of error for the purpose of pointing out the folly of his foolishness is positively inhuman. What, I ask, would have been the moral effect upon the prodigal had his father prepared a feast of proverbs instead of a fatted calf? This question she has never answered except by[Pg 72] a baffling tight-lipped smile—a smile that convinces me of the utter folly of hoping that a woman will listen to reason. Yes, I had good cause to believe that mentioning the Griggs episode would lead to useless discussion. [Pg 71] [Pg 72] It was a warm day in midsummer when I found a note from Griggs in my morning mail. He had learned at the office that I was spending my vacation at home, and he concluded that all danger of infection was over. " ... Now, old chap," he wrote, "I can't wait any longer; I've got to
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