When tea is over--and it is soon over--young John Smith silently departs to another home, very like his own, in the next street but one. In that other home is a girl whom John sincerely considers to be the pearl of womanhood. In a few months John, inspired and aided by this pearl, will embark in business for himself as constructor of a home.
Mary Smith wanders silently and inconspicuously into the drawing-room (it being, as you know summer) and caresses the piano in an expectant manner. John’s views as to the identity of the pearl of womanhood are not shared by another young man who lives not very far off. This other young man has no doubt whatever that the pearl of womanhood is precisely Mary Smith (an idea which had never entered John’s head); and he comes to see Mary every night, with the permission of her parents. The pair are, in fact, engaged. Probably Mary opens the door for him, in which case they go straight to the drawing-room. (One is glad to think that, after all, the drawingroom is turning out useful.) Young Henry has disappeared from human ken.
Mr. Smith and wife remain in the dining-room, separated from each other by a newspaper, which Mr. Smith is ostensibly reading. I say “ostensibly,” for what Mr. Smith is really reading on the page of the newspaper is this: “I shall have to give something to John, something pretty handsome. Of course, there’s no question of a dowry with Mary, but I shall have to give something handsome to her, too. And weddings cost money. And I have no savings, except my insurance.” He keeps on reading this in every column. It is true. He is still worried about money, as he was 26 years ago. He has lived hard and honourably, ever at strain, and never had a moment’s true peace of mind: once it was the fear of losing his situation; now it is the fear of his business going wrong; always it has been the tendency of expenditure to increase. The fruit of his ancient immense desire to have Mrs. Smith is now ripe for falling. The home which he and she have built is finished now, and is to be disintegrated. And John and Mary are about to begin again what their parents once began. I can almost hear Mr. Smith plaintively asking the newspaper, as he thinks over the achieved enterprise of his home: Has it been a success? Is it a success?