That Freedom shall not pass from earth Nor tyranny prevail; Yea, those that now in anguish bow, We know that soon or late They shall be lifted from beneath The iron heel of hate. O brave defenders of the free, Our hearts have sanctified! And through these days of strife and death, THE BOMB I OU are late. Billy's been howling the house down." "All babies cry, big or little, now and then. The nurse Nellie Cameron paused to smooth a quiver out of her voice-"I am not late." is with Billy. I-" "You are not?" Joseph Cameron, bewildered, laid his paper upon his knees and squinted up at his wife. "No, Joe, I am not." As if it absorbed her, and no one could have said that it did not, for she kept house beautifully, Nellie straightened an etching; then quietly she walked out of the room. She went into their bedroom and closed the door. After a while Cameron, watching warily, saw her come into the hall again in a peach-colored dress that he particularly liked her in; saw her go down the hall, away from him—and she had a very good back— to the nursery door, the warm, cheerful firelight falling full upon her face, her hands, her softly glowing dress. Billy, their only son, just learning to walk, toddled to meet her. Cameron saw the chubby hands rumple her skirts, saw Nellie stoop and swing him high with her firm arms, then drop him to his place upon her breast. The door closed, the hall was shadowy again, the apartment as still as a place marked "To Let." The dinner was on time and excellent; Nellie, decorative and chatty, was promptly in her place. Dinner over, they went to the sitting-room for their coffee. The apartment was very high up, the windows looking over the tree-tops of the Drive, across the Hudson to the Jersey shore. It was March, and the shore lights wavered in gusts of rain that threatened to turn to snow. The room was warm; Cameron was suffocating; Nellie was serenely unaware. She had eaten well, from her soup through her cheese. There are times when, to a man, a woman's appetite is the last straw. She was tired, she said, but at her ease, and never prettier. "Going out to-night, Joey?" "Yes. Bridge hand around at Gordon's. Want a talk with Gordon about a matter of business." "I like to have things to do in the afternoon, but when night comes"-Nellie smothered a contented yawn-"I love getting into something comfy, and just buzzing round our own lamp.” "I must own that I have never found afternoon diversions to be diverting." To save him he could not keep his voice good-natured. He had had a grind of a day, and was dog-tired; it seemed to him she ought to know it and talk about it. "Yes?" Nellie mused. "It was amusing at the club to-day-the Non-descripts." She laughed softly. "It wasn't 'nondescript' today, though!" "Some old maid telling you to bring your children up on the county, and throw your husbands out of their jobs?" "What, Joey?" Nellie seemed to bring her thoughts back from a long way off. "Old maid? I should say not! We had a man. We nearly always do. Then everybody comes, and there's more glow. He was an English socialist-I guess he was a socialist. Burne-Jones hair, and a homespun jacket,—loose, and all that,— and a heavy ribbon on his glasses. He talked about the new man." "The what?" "The new man." Nellie opened her eyes wide, as if her husband puzzled her. "Well-I'm damned!" Nellie broke into sudden mirth. "You were, Joey dear; that is just what you were. damned all the way there and back again." You were Cameron strangled. "Have I the honor to typify the-new creature?" "You're the very image of him, Joey dear." And she smiled upon him as if he were some new moth, in at their window, to buzz round their lamp. "And-this person-?" Nellie became eagerly communicative. "I do wonder if I can make you see him? Tall and dark, and with good-looking, thinnish hands and a most amusing way of playing with his eye-glasses. You know, Joey: the sort of distinguished talk-it-all-out sort of man that just makes men rage. Of course," she went on, largely wise, "he's the sort of socialist to make a real socialist rage, but he's just the thing for clubs." "You often have them?" "Of course," she laughed. at home any more. "You see, we don't see much of men It keeps us from forgetting how you look, and how amusing you may be." Cameron gazed before him into a chaos without words. Nellie was oblivious. "He finished off with a perfect bomb, Joey. It was funny! Of course the new man's a city product, and he drew him to the life: rushed and tortured by ambition, tired out at the end of the day, too tired to be possibly amusing, his nerves excited till anything quieter than lower Broadway hurts his ears, all passion and brilliance spent on business, dinners here and there, with people who all have their ax to grind, too, and are keyed up to it by rows and rows of cocktails. He drew him without mercy, and he had every wife there either wincing or laughing, with the truth of what he said. He was quite eloquent." She paused, she laughed softly, she turned her eyes upon him. "Then, Joey, guess-just guess! -what he said!" |