The Boy Grew Older

But it wasn't right away. First he had to go upstairs to the card room and settle his losses. Indeed he played one more pot for when he returned to the table his deal had come a...

Peter saw Maria only once after that and then for a few minutes. Most of the time she wept. "She's getting along splendidly," said Dr. Clay. "Her nervous condition isn't good,"...

Maria was right. They did talk about it again and largely because Peter surprised himself and her with enterprise. It was raining hard that night when she came out into the alle...

Maria blamed a good many things upon the institution of marriage for which the explanation probably lay elsewhere. If Peter had been a lover rather than a husband he would still...

On the way back to the flat in West Sixty-sixth Street, Peter stopped at a store and asked for Dr. Kerley's book. The clerk was sorry that it was not in stock. Of course he coul...

"That's for some other reason. It isn't because I'm holding him wrong. All little babies cry a good deal at first. It's good for them. Any time a small baby doesn't cry a certai...

When Peter reached the corner he found that it was only half-past twelve. It was much too early to get drunk. Daylight drinking had always seemed to him disgusting. As a matter...

It was after ten when Peter came into Billy Gallivan's, the restaurant of the singing waiters. By now he could not see distinctly every sheep which jumped over the fence but he...

Somebody at the office must have heard about the flight of Maria Algarez, for when Peter returned from Goldfield he had found at his flat a telegram which said, "Lay off a coupl...

THE baby carriage was kept in the kitchen thereafter and Peter did not see it again until Sunday, his first Sunday at home. Kate left the flat very early. Peter could not very w...

The name Peter did not stick to the baby long. Old Peter noticed that Kate never used it. Her first move was to modify it into Petey, then Pete and suddenly it became an unmista...

Pat grew but it was slow work. Kate would speak of an ounce as if it were some silver trophy which the child had won. Like Samuel Butler her admiration was unbounded for the int...

At the age of eleven months and eight days Pat walked for the first time. Peter thought he might have been considerate enough to have chosen a Sunday. His first tooth came on a...

But Vonnie had such an imperious and lofty way of rising above all things traditionally embarrassing to Peter and snooting down at them that she carried him with her. At least p...

Peter worried a good deal over Vonnie's predictions as to Pat's future. The doubt which she had cast upon the feasibility of his scheme heightened after the victrola was introdu...

Vonnie made good her threat and two weeks after the quarrel Peter received a picture postcard of a giant redwood. The message said, "Well Peter here I am in San Francisco--Vonni...

Pat furnished copy for Peter again within a month. Kate came in from the Park all breathless with an account of a fight between the child and his friend and playmate Bobby, last...

Pat was six years old when he saw his first ball game up at the old hill top park of the New York Yankees who were then the Highlanders. The Red Sox were the visiting team.

Peter was coming back to America. He had been through the war and then the peace and he was very tired. The tension of it all was still upon him. Even though he lay back in his...

It was a June night in the fourth year of the war when Peter saw Maria Algarez. He was walking up the Avenue de l'Opera when a woman cut across in front of him, turning into a s...

Maria went to the Argentine a month later but Peter heard from her every now and then. Her letters were mostly brief, acknowledging the letters from Pat which Peter forwarded to...

A few months later while the peace conference was still raging fiercely, Peter was puzzled by a cablegram which he received from America. "Congratulations on your story," it rea...

It was a Pat prodigiously grown who met Peter as he came down the gangplank. Not much had altered in the look of him but just the added inches and heft gave him a curiously dist...

"Let's go and dine at some terribly quiet place," suggested Peter as he and Pat came down in the elevator from the office of Rufus Twice. They went to the Harvard Club and sat i...

The plans of Rufus Twice did not work out quite according to specifications. Pat went to Harvard, but he failed to make the football team although he remained on the squad as a...

Peter waited and then suddenly he remembered his interview with Miles years ago, the day he came to the office in bandages and was never offered a chance to tell about it. A que...

On sports Pat worked better and more cheerfully. It was Pat who devised the note at one of the Princeton football games, "The Tiger eleven has three fine backs and the greatest...

Rufus Twice was more optimistic. "He's getting along fine," he reported. "I flatter myself that he's picked up more of the newspaper angle on things in the last two weeks than h...