* * * * *

Mabel got up presently and came across to her husband.

"My dear," she said, "you must not be downhearted. It all may pass as it
passed before. It is a great thing that they are listening to America at
all. And this Mr. Felsenburgh seems to be on the right side."

Oliver took her hand and kissed it.



II

Oliver seemed altogether depressed at breakfast, half an hour later. His
mother, an old lady of nearly eighty, who never appeared till noon,
seemed to see it at once, for after a look or two at him and a word, she
subsided into silence behind her plate.

It was a pleasant little room in which they sat, immediately behind
Oliver's own, and was furnished, according to universal custom, in light
green. Its windows looked out upon a strip of garden at the back, and
the high creeper-grown wall that separated that domain from the next.
The furniture, too, was of the usual sort; a sensible round table stood
in the middle, with three tall arm-chairs, with the proper angles and
rests, drawn up to it; and the centre of it, resting apparently on a
broad round column, held the dishes. It was thirty years now since the
practice of placing the dining-room above the kitchen, and of raising
and lowering the courses by hydraulic power into the centre of the
dining-table, had become universal in the houses of the well-to-do. The