Under the Skylights

a director: to act on the board of one at least of these grandiose institutions would have given her a great deal of comfort. She was clever, she was forceful, she was ambitious,-but she was a woma

is miserably unjust,"

ys settled by checks on the Grindstone, as well as her obligations to the insatiable cormorants that trafficked in "robes and manteaux" farther up town. The bank was close to the shopping

a long solid table whose top bore a litter of papers-among them, many big sheets of light brown. She saw what was going on,-a directors' meeting. Her unappeased longing rose and stirred once more within her, and a shadow crossed her broad handsome

er banks," she sighed; "but if I co

and wagged a big head covered with frizzled sandy hair, and gave them glances of humorous determination from his narrow gray-green eyes, and waved a pair of long supple hands in their protesting faces. Yes, the faces were protesting all. "Who are you

they must all be hesitating, fumbling, floundering-snared by a problem wholly new and unfamiliar, and readily falling victims to intimidation from the humblest source. The entire situ

ht be glad to have me. I feel certain that, if left t

w of self-doubt. The elderly hand of her husband, which was deep in vaster concerns, seldom interfered in hers, and never obtrusively. Now and then he dropped for a moment his own interests-he was engaged in forming the trustful into trusts and in massing s

of such calibre could fittingly occupy a mere room or two in a big "block" given over to miscellaneous business purposes. It was little to the advantage of the Grindstone that it shared its entrance-way with a steamship company

aggling his short chin beard decisively and shutting his handsome porcelain t

ns and Mr. Holbrook and the rest of the directors; and they had all finally agreed-all save Mr. Rosenberg-that the time was come for the Grindstone

icular training and temperament dictated. Andrew was a bit dazed, but none the less exhilarated; Jeremiah shook his head, yet kept his feet in motion; Simon grumbled that the whole business spelt little less than ruination. But Roscoe Orlando Gibbons, who had been about the world not a little and who drew sanction for the young architect's doings from more quarters of the Continent than one, instantly rose to the occasion and landed on the topmost pinnacle of the shining temple at a single swoop. Here he stood tiptoe and b

material, and had imagined a grandiose facade with a long colonnade of polished blue-granite pillars, a pompous attic story above, and a wide flight of marble steps below. The inside was to be quite as overbearingly classical as

had declined to work or to allow anybody else to work. Such trifles as these could be foreseen and allowed for; but not one of the Grindstone's devoted little band had ever grappled with a general decorative scheme for the embellishment of a great edifice raised to the greater glory of Six-per-cent, or had attempted to adjust the rival claims of a horde of painters, sculptors, modellers, and mosaickers all eager for a chance to di

have to calcimine the whole place

of the Morrell Twins. Andrew, giving a sigh of relief, swept the drawings quic