Lena had said such things before. Dick began to revolve plans for a
larger kindness, and, in his slow masculine intellect, fancied that it
was all his own idea to try and bring this small person into contact
with those who would appreciate her and with whom she could be
happy,--for of course Lena herself was quite submissive to her lot.
To Dick's friends this long summer dawdled itself away much as the
previous one had done. There were the same week-ends at the lake, with
Dick more full of vivacity than ever, Ellery growing more certain of
himself, Madeline rounding slowly out of girlhood into womanhood. Yet
there was a difference. Half a dozen Sundays, when Percival was too
busy, Ellery, half-irritated with his friend, half-exultant in his
desertion, spent the quiet afternoons à deux with Madeline.
It seemed to Norris that some indefinable change was coming over Dick.
At times he was vivid, even fantastic, and again he lapsed into erratic
silences out of which he came at new and unexpected points. He developed
ideas that appeared to his friend not quite in keeping with the sterling
Dick of old. He was less sensitive, so thought Ellery, in his code of
honor as he saw more and more of the crooked ways of men. Once Norris
met him walking with one of the cheaper aldermen, and he wore a
duplicate--in gilt--of the alderman's walk and swagger. He talked
politics and reform, but with less emphasis on his ideals and more on
the game, which seemed to mean the fun of catching the rascals
red-handed and turning them out.
Madeline, as Ellery studied her, was unaware of any change either in
Dick himself or in his attitude toward her. It was like her to be above
suspicions or small jealousies.
So summer slipped into October, and there came a month of lovely days.
Winter, after a feint, slunk into hiding again, and the only result of
his excursion was a more splendid red on the maples, a more glowing
russet on the oaks. Indian summer reigned in his stead, flinging
broadcast her gorgeous colors and her melting mellowness. That men might
not surfeit of her sweets, she tempered her daytime prodigality of heat
by nights of frost. People were coming back to town, a few, very few, in
velvet gowns, but mostly in rags and anxious about their autumn
wardrobes; and yet these were days to make one long, as one does in
spring, for the smell of the good brown earth and the sniff of untainted
country air. The atmosphere was full of glowing warmth that penetrated
to the heart and made every face on the street reflect some of its
delight; for autumn with her thousand charms and witcheries was proving
that she died, not from gray old age, but in the fullness of her prime.