the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See you
tonight. So long."


II

They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before, the hill
on which Floral Heights was spread, with its bright roofs and immaculate
turf and amazing comfort, had been a wilderness of rank second-growth
elms and oaks and maples. Along the precise streets were still a few
wooded vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant
to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like torches of
green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms flickered down a gully,
and robins clamored.

Babbitt sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would
have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the
perfect office-going executive--a well-fed man in a correct brown soft
hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good
motor along a semi-suburban parkway. But in him was some genius of
authentic love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was
over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth, which to
him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was ruddily cheerful when
he stopped on Smith Street to leave the brown trousers, and to have the
gasoline-tank filled.

The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the tall red
iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta garage, the window
full of the most agreeable accessories--shiny casings, spark-plugs with
immaculate porcelain jackets tire-chains of gold and silver. He was