CHAPTER XXXI.
THEIR FOOLISH WAYS.
It is, as I have said so often, but the simple story of two friends of mine I am trying to tell, but I wish I had more gift in that direction.
I wish I could paint, just as an artist with brush and colors reproduces something, the home life in the house where much of my time was spent.

I can but give a mechanical idea of what it was, but to me it was very pleasant.
A very shrewd politician Jean became, after the famous contest in which the Ninth Ward aided us to victory, and we were accustomed to consult her on the social bearings of many a struggle.

In case she became too arbitrary on any occasion Grant had fallen into the way of calling the Ape, and asking him to remove her, whereupon the youth would carry off his small mother in his arms and insist that, as he put it, from a childhood expression, with a long "a," she "'have herself." There was ever this quality of the whimsical about life in this home.

And I am inclined to believe that the world is better for such a flavor.
The children, were well grown now, the family was rounded out, and Grant's mustache, gray when he was forty, was now grayer still, though Jean's brown hair showed yet no glint of silver.

I asked one day after dinner, when we two were idling and smoking in the library, and Jean was hovering about, if she hadn't a gray hair yet, and Grant said no, without hesitation, though the lady herself seemed less assured.