Margaret Cameron

“ James Mason so sure of his own glass houses that he dares throw such heavy stones?" Her tone was touched with mockery, and he looked at her in surprise.
"People don't understand Uncle James," he said, gently. "They think he's hard and rough and cold—and so he is, in a way. But he's had a hard, rough, cold life. And he's always been disappointed in the thing he set his heart upon. First it was the education he longed for and couldn't have. You ought to hear him talk about his one year in college!" ”

“ These men are all his associates, and it touches his pride."
"Hm!" commented Bess. "Perhaps it will do him good to have his pride ground down a little. I dare say he deserves it. Bob may be an instrument in the hands of Nemesis. Who knows? I'm going to get up."
"Well, I do think you might show a little sympathy for poor Tom," complained Kate. "He's heartbroken about the thing."
"It may not be as hopeless as he thinks. You never can tell," was the unruffled reply. "Uncle may have troubles of his own by night. Even curmudgeons do, sometimes." ”

“ They say there's nobody equal to him in the whole college when he chooses to settle down to work—which isn't often, to be sure. And now that terrible old man—!"
"What is he likely to do?" asked Bess, curiously but soberly.
"That's what all Brookfield was asking over the telephone last night. Nobody knows. Of course Bob hasn't done much real harm this time, but he's made a lot of men look perfectly ridiculous, and they're all furious. It's the sort of thing a certain type of man hates more than anything else, and James Mason's of that type. He'll never forgive it. ”

“ Ford's lips twisted skeptically. "But I don't see who's going to start the wheels."
"You never can tell," returned Miss Wallace, with a cryptic little smile. "That was a pleasing fancy of the ancients, to place a cup of poison in a man's hands and make him lift it to his lips himself, wasn't it?" Which was as near as she ever came to telling Kate about her encounter with James Mason the night before, for Bess was not one to give half-confidences, and there was that in the earlier utterances of Tom's uncle in her hearing that she would not repeat even to her sister. ”

“ Nor Tom, either. But confound it, man, I was a Freshie! We were all Freshies then. Bob's past all that—or ought to be."
"Remember Bill Dewing? Brightest chap in our class? Remember what a perfect limb he was—oh, you weren't there! Well, he never got over being a comet. It took the whole class, during the Senior year, to keep him in order long enough to graduate; and look at him now! Probably the most brilliant political writer in this country."
"Right you are!" exclaimed the other man. "Give your comet room to swing in, Jim. Nobody ever gets over being a kid until he's dead. ”

“ These also found seats near the middle of the car, whence the strident voices of the boys, as they displayed and gloated and quarrelled over their treasures, smote upon her tired ears.
Presently her attention was attracted by a particularly merry and mellow laugh just outside her window, and a jovial masculine voice said:
"The only trouble with you, Jim, is that you don't loosen up often enough. You'll wake up some fine morning and find yourself an old man if you don't look out." ”

“ I'm glad, too, that I can honestly say I had never seen the man before, that I didn't know when he came into the car, and that he left it before the excitement was over. It was a very natural, boyish sort of thing to do under the circumstances, but it wasn't, as it turned out, a thing that a dignified, responsible, rather elderly man would care to have published and spread broadcast about himself. Now was it?" She appealed to Tom. ”

“ For a moment she contemplated going to his relief, but no one seemed to take the affair at all seriously, so she kept both her seat and her counsel, and in time, somewhat delayed by the bomb episode, the train arrived in Brookfield, where Miss Wallace found her brother-in-law awaiting her at the station, and she saw James Mason no more that night. ”

“ Most women would have screamed."
Entirely reassured as to her ignorance in the matter, he took off his hat, bowed, and made a dignified exit, while she stood looking after him, a curious light in her eyes. So that, again, was James Mason! Through the open door she saw him drop off the platform and go forward, apparently to the smoking-car; and a moment later, taking advantage of the excitement still centering on the sons of Italy, she slipped out and found a seat in the coach behind. ”

“ He may be unburied, but he's dead, all right. Look at yourself. You've been walled up for years in that academic mausoleum of a town up the road here, and even yet you're not defunct! You still wake up and raise—"
"Only once a year, boys! ”