“Government satisfied.  Appropriation certain next session.  Am on my
     way to New York.”

Austin, in his house, which was now dismantled for the summer, telephoned Nina at Silverside that he had been detained and might not be able to grace the festivities which were to consist of a neighbourhood dinner to the younger set in honour of Mrs. Gerald.  But he said nothing about Selwyn, and Nina did not suspect that her brother’s arrival in New York had anything to do with Austin’s detention.

There was in Austin a curious substreak of sentiment which seldom came to the surface except where his immediate family was involved.  In his dealings with others he avoided it; even with Gerald and Eileen there had been little of this sentiment apparent.  But where Selwyn was concerned, from the very first days of their friendship, he had always felt in his heart very close to the man whose sister he had married, and was always almost automatically on his guard to avoid any expression of that affection.  Once he had done so, or attempted to, when Selwyn first arrived from the Philippines, and it made them both uncomfortable to the verge of profanity, but remained as a shy source of solace to them both.

And now as Selwyn came leisurely up the front steps, Austin, awaiting him feverishly, hastened to smooth the florid jocose mask over his features, and walked into the room, big hand extended, large bantering voice undisturbed by the tremor of a welcome which filled his heart and came near filling his eyes: 

“So you’ve stuck the poor old Government at last, have you?  Took ’em all in—­forts, fleet, and the marine cavalry?”

“Sure thing,” said Selwyn, laughing in the crushing grasp of the big fist.  “How are you, Austin?  Everybody’s in the country, I suppose,” glancing around at the linen-shrouded furniture.  “How is Nina?  And the kids? . . .  Good business! . . .  And Eileen?”

“She’s all right,” said Austin; “gad! she’s really a superb specimen this summer. . . .  You know she rather eased off last winter—­got white around the gills and blue under the eyes. . . .  Some heart trouble—­we all thought it was you.  Young girls have such notions sometimes, and I told Nina, but she sat on me. . . .  Where’s your luggage?  Oh, is it all here?—­enough, I mean, for us to catch a train for Silverside this afternoon.”

“Has Nina any room for me?” asked Selwyn.

“Room!  Certainly.  I didn’t tell her you were coming, because if you hadn’t, the kids would have been horribly disappointed.  She and Eileen are giving a shindy for Gladys—­that’s Gerald’s new acquisition, you know.  So if you don’t mind butting into a baby-show we’ll run down.  It’s only the younger bunch from Hitherwood House and Brookminster.  What do you say, Phil?”

Selwyn said that he would go—­hesitating before consenting.  A curious feeling of age and grayness had suddenly come over him—­a hint of fatigue, of consciousness that much of life lay behind him.