They submitted with equal cheerfulness to the privations and excesses of their new conditions.  Within three years the schoolmaster developed into a lawyer and capitalist, the Blue Grass bride supplying a grace and ease to these transitions that were all her own.  She softened the abruptness of sudden wealth, mitigated the austerities of newly acquired power, and made the most glaring incongruity picturesque.  Only one thing seemed to limit their progress in the region of these possibilities.  They were childless.  It was as if they had exhausted the future in their own youth, leaving little or nothing for another generation to do.

* * * * *

A southwesterly storm was beating against the dressing-room windows of their new house in one of the hilly suburbs of San Francisco, and threatening the unseasonable frivolity of the stucco ornamentation of cornice and balcony.  Mrs. Tucker had been called from the contemplation of the dreary prospect without by the arrival of a visitor.  On entering the drawing-room she found him engaged in a half admiring, half resentful examination of its new furniture and hangings.  Mrs. Tucker at once recognized Mr. Calhoun Weaver, a former Blue Grass neighbor; with swift feminine intuition she also felt that his slight antagonism was likely to be transferred from her furniture to herself.  Waiving it with the lazy amiability of Southern indifference, she welcomed him by the familiarity of a Christian name.

“I reckoned that mebbee you opined old Blue Grass friends wouldn’t naturally hitch on to them fancy doins,” he said, glancing around the apartment to avoid her clear eyes, as if resolutely setting himself against the old charm of her manner as he had against the more recent glory of her surroundings, “but I thought I’d just drop in for the sake of old times.”

“Why shouldn’t you, Cal?” said Mrs. Tucker with a frank smile.

“Especially as I’m going up to Sacramento to-night with some influential friends,” he continued, with an ostentation calculated to resist the assumption of her charms and her furniture.  “Senator Dyce of Kentucky, and his cousin Judge Briggs; perhaps you know ’em, or maybe Spencer—­I mean Mr. Tucker—­does.”

“I reckon,” said Mrs. Tucker smiling; “but tell me something about the boys and girls at Vineville, and about yourself. You’re looking well, and right smart too.”  She paused to give due emphasis to this latter recognition of a huge gold chain with which her visitor was somewhat ostentatiously trifling.

“I didn’t know as you cared to hear anything about Blue Grass,” he returned, a little abashed.  “I’ve been away from there some time myself,” he added, his uneasy vanity taking fresh alarm at the faint suspicion of patronage on the part of his hostess.  “They’re doin’ well though; perhaps as well as some others.”

“And you’re not married yet,” continued Mrs. Tucker, oblivious of the innuendo.  “Ah Cal,” she added archly, “I am afraid you are as fickle as ever.  What poor girl in Vineville have you left pining?”