Swallowed Up

This volume was published in 1922.Book excerpts:Everything in this intimate room of Mrs. Ranger's was old and faintly tarnished. In her day she had been a beauty, Southern as her name, Mary Louise Beauchamp Carter poor as poverty with generations of wealth behind her born to a leaking family roof- tree, old family silver, old family pictures, old family servants, the latter dwindling in number until none remained. Her mother had pinned her last hope to Mary Lou ; but before the rash girl was twenty she had lost her head over a rising young nobody at all, Loring Ran- ger, with less background than a chipmunk and no particularly substantial foreground, and had recklessly married him. Mrs. Carter shed tears steadily, and only abandoned them for equally steady smiles when she realized the genius of her son-in-law for making money hand over hand lucky hands that turned everything they touched into gold. Then, completely reconciled, she gave them her blessing, bestowed upon them the family heirlooms and departed this life in peace. ............................................................................................Hardly had he passed out and gone his way before the door opened again, and Kelsey strolled in. Mor- ton's sanctum, a small cluttered office at the rear of the building, was not an especially inviting retreat, but Kelsey had fallen into the way of drifting in there almost every evening. There was no other companionship for either of them ; for Morton was an odd, mousy, little man who left the hospital but rarely even when off duty. He was a night-hawk, sitting up until all hours, and Kelsey often wondered when he slept. With a taste for long discussions, usually on some scientific subject, he would go on interminably, sometimes until the dawn showed at the windows; and only too glad to have a listener, he winked at the infraction of the rule which required a patient to be in his room by nine o'clock.