X

Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were both given to such long periods of ruminating
apathy that the student of inheritance might have wondered whence Undine
derived her overflowing activity. The answer would have been obtained
by observing her father's business life. From the moment he set foot
in Wall Street Mr. Spragg became another man. Physically the change
revealed itself only by the subtlest signs. As he steered his way to his
office through the jostling crowd of William Street his relaxed muscles
did not grow more taut or his lounging gait less desultory. His
shoulders were hollowed by the usual droop, and his rusty black
waistcoat showed the same creased concavity at the waist, the same
flabby prominence below. It was only in his face that the difference was
perceptible, though even here it rather lurked behind the features than
openly modified them: showing itself now and then in the cautious glint
of half-closed eyes, the forward thrust of black brows, or a tightening
of the lax lines of the mouth--as the gleam of a night-watchman's light
might flash across the darkness of a shuttered house-front. The shutters
were more tightly barred than usual, when, on a morning some two
weeks later than the date of the incidents last recorded, Mr. Spragg
approached the steel and concrete tower in which his office occupied a
lofty pigeon-hole. Events had moved rapidly and somewhat surprisingly in
the interval, and Mr. Spragg had already accustomed himself to the fact
that his daughter was to be married within the week, instead of awaiting
the traditional post-Lenten date. Conventionally the change meant little
to him; but on the practical side it presented unforeseen difficulties.
Mr. Spragg had learned within the last weeks that a New York marriage