Chapter 1 - The Advertisement

“Mark Winslow would be glad and happy to receive his grandchild, Joyce Gilray, into his heart and home. Please communicate, Willowvale, N. Y.”

But the above notice materialized only after Mark Winslow’s twenty-two-year struggle with a determination never to relent, never to forgive, never to seek or accept acquaintance with said grandchild.

Decision of character, that much-lauded trait, is, after all, only one degree removed from obstinacy, and Mark Winslow had taken that degree, and was now one of the World’s Ten Greatest Obstinates.

Over forty years ago, in that modern Eden, rather vaguely known as “up Westchester way,” he had elected to pitch his tent, or rather, his wife had elected it, which came to the same thing.

But, having seen to it that the pitching was done properly, and that the tent was well equipped with bathrooms and sun parlors, with poplar rows and formal gardens, the good lady passed on.

This left Mark Winslow in possession of his pitched tent and one growing daughter.

The latter continued to grow in all the ways of audacity and coquetry until she grew out of reach of her father’s authority, out of all bounds of convention, even decorum, and wound up by eloping with the chauffeur.

Let it be said in passing that he was a chauffeur of sorts, a Harvard undergraduate, working on his vacation.

This calamity, in addition to the death of his wife, had turned Winslow from a fine benevolent husband and father into a soured misanthrope. From an indulgent, easy