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HIS household cares disposed of, Crane went off to the stables. It was a soft hazy autumn morning, and though he walked along whistling his heart was heavy. These changes in background always depressed him. His mother had been dead about two years, and at times like this he particularly missed her. She had always contrived to make domestic difficulties not only unimportant, but amusing. She had been pretty and young, both in years and spirit, and had had the determining influence on her son since his childhood.
His parents had married early and imprudently. The elder Crane, stung by some ill-considered words of his wife's family, had resolved from the first to make a successful career for himself. Shrewd, hard and determined, he had not missed his mark. Burton's earliest recollections of him were fleeting glimpses of a white, tired, silent man seldom, it seemed to him, at home, and, by his gracious absences, giving him, Burton, a sort of prior claim on all the time and all the attention of his mother.