Hal took off his widow's weeds; and with them he shed the merriment he had worn for the benefit of the men. There came a sudden reaction; he realised that he was tired. For ten days he had lived in a whirl of excitement, scarcely stopping to sleep. Now he lay back in the car-seat, pale, exhausted; his head ached, and he realised that the sum-total of his North Valley experience was failure. There was left in him no trace of that spirit of adventure with which he had set out upon his “summer course in practical sociology.” He had studied his lessons, tried to recite them, and been “flunked.” He smiled a bitter smile, recollecting the careless jesting that had been on his lips as he came up that same canyon:
  “He keeps them a-roll, that merry old soul—
    The wheels of industree;
  A-roll and a-roll, for his pipe and his bowl
    And his college facultee!”
 
The train arrived in Pedro, and Hal took a hack at the station and drove to the hotel. He still carried the widow's weeds rolled into a bundle. He might have left them in the train, but the impulse to economy which he had acquired during the last ten weeks had become a habit. He would return them to Mrs. Zamboni. The money he had promised her might better be used to feed her young ones. The two pillows he would leave in the car; the hotel might endure the loss!
Entering the lobby, the first person Hal saw was his brother, and the sight of that patrician face made human by disgust relieved Hal's headache in part. Life was harsh, life was cruel; but here was weary, waiting Edward, that boon of comic relief!
Edward demanded to know where the devil he had been; and Hal answered, “I've been visiting the widows and orphans.”
“Oh!” said Edward. “And while I sit in this hole and stew! What's that you've got under your arm?”
Hal looked at the bundle. “It's a souvenir of one of the widows,” he said, and unrolled the garments and spread them out before his brother's puzzled eyes. “A lady named Mrs. Swajka gave them to me. They belonged to another lady, Mrs. Zamboni, but she doesn't need them any more.”
“What have you got to do with them?”
“It seems that Mrs. Zamboni is going to get married again.” Hal lowered his voice, confidentially. “It's a romance, Edward—it may interest you as an illustr............