Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/424

 Galatea." He is the dramatic critic of an evening paper now and no matter what he writes he tries to write it flippantly. When he is asked why he does not attack the theatrical trust, he explains: "My brother is in it. It's bad taste to air a purely family quarrel in the newspapers, don't you think?" And when Walter hears of this he clears his throat—and smiles.

For the rest: Don spends a frequent "honeymoon" in Coulton where Conroy, now soberly settled down, is managing a department of his father's business, and F. Grayson Gregg is the junior partner in the law firm of "Gregg and Gregg," and Mr. Gregg no longer tries to hide from himself that he is not as proud of Frank as he is of his eldest son, "the dramatist." Don still finds his mother, in her invalid chair beside the window, waiting to welcome him with her remembered smile. The peephole still remains in the frosted glass of the nursery door through which he looked at Santa Claus. Margaret and he can still make a smiling pilgrimage to the little ravine where they used to read the "Faerie Queene" together; and there—as if the breath of the firs refreshed the unquenchable youth in him—she finds him still a lover, still a poet in spite of any disillusionment; still a gentle solitary, and still a Don-a-Dreams.