Sidney sprang to her feet.
“It's perfectly terrible!” she cried. “Because you rent a room in this house is no reason why you should give up your personality and your—intelligence. Not but that it's good for you. But Katie has made bread without masculine assistance for a good many years, and if Christine can't decide about her own veil she'd better not get married. Mother says you water the flowers every evening, and lock up the house before you go to bed. I—I never meant you to adopt the family!”
K. removed his pipe and gazed earnestly into the bowl.
“Bill Taft has had kittens under the porch,” he said. “And the groceryman has been sending short weight. We've bought scales now, and weigh everything.”
“You are evading the question.”
“Dear child, I am doing these things because I like to do them. For—for some time I've been floating, and now I've got a home. Every time I lock up the windows at night, or cut a picture out of a magazine as a suggestion to your Aunt Harriet, it's an anchor to windward.”
Sidney gazed helplessly at his imperturbable face. He seemed older than she had recalled him: the hair over his ears was almost white. And yet, he was just thirty. That was Palmer Howe's age, and Palmer seemed like a boy. But he held himself more erect than he had in the first days of his occupancy of the second-floor front.
“And now,” he said cheerfully, “what about yourself? You've lost a lot of illusions, of course, but perhaps you've gained ideals. That's a step.”
“Life,” observed Sidney, with the wisdom of two weeks out in the world, “life is a terrible thing, K. We think we've got it, and—it's got us.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“When I think of how simple I used to think it all was! One grew up and got married, and—and perhaps had children. And when one got very old, one died. Lately, I've been seeing that life really consists of exceptions—children who don't grow up, and grown-ups who die before they are old. And”—this took an effort, but she looked at him squarely—“and people who have
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