When he was not working the newspapers there, he went about with them over the familiar ground they were showing their children, and was simply grateful for the chance, as well as very entertaining about it all.

The children liked him, too; when they got the clew to his intention, and found that he was not quite serious in many of the things he said, they thought he was great fun.

They were always glad when their father brought him home on the occasion of Fulkerson's visits to Boston; and Mrs.March, though of a charier hospitality, welcomed Fulkerson with a grateful sense of his admiration for her husband.

He had a way of treating March with deference, as an older and abler man, and of qualifying the freedom he used toward every one with an implication that March tolerated it voluntarily, which she thought very sweet and even refined.
"Ah, now you're talking like a man and a brother," said Fulkerson.

"Why, March, old man, do you suppose I'd come on here and try to talk you into this thing if I wasn't morally, if I wasn't perfectly, sure of success?
There isn't any if or and about it.