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THE INNOCENTS


    BOOKS BY
    SINCLAIR LEWIS

      THE INNOCENTS
      THE JOB
      THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK
      OUR MR. WRENN

    HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
    [ESTABLISHED 1817]




[Illustration: THE INNOCENTS]




    THE INNOCENTS

    A STORY FOR LOVERS

    BY
    SINCLAIR LEWIS

    AUTHOR OF "THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK" "THE JOB" ETC.

    HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
    NEW YORK AND LONDON


    THE INNOCENTS

    Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
    Printed in the United States of America
    Published October, 1917
    F-R




A DEDICATORY INTRODUCTION


If this were a ponderous work of realism, such as the author has
attempted to write, and will doubtless essay again, it would be perilous
to dedicate it to the splendid assembly of young British writers, lest
the critics search for Influences and Imitations. But since this is a
flagrant excursion, a tale for people who still read Dickens and clip
out spring poetry and love old people and children, it may safely
confess the writer's strident admiration for Compton Mackenzie, Hugh
Walpole, Oliver Onions, D. H. Lawrence, J. D. Beresford, Gilbert Cannan,
Patrick MacGill, and their peers, whose novels are the histories of our
contemporaneous Golden Age. Nor may these be mentioned without a yet
more enthusiastic tribute to their master and teacher (he probably
abominates being called either a master or a teacher), H. G. Wells.




THE INNOCENTS

CHAPTER I


Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby were almost old. They called each other
"Father" and "Mother." But frequently they were guilty of holding hands,
or of cuddling together in corners, and Father was a person of stubborn
youthfulness. For something over forty years Mother had been trying to
make him stop smoking, yet every time her back was turned he would sneak
out his amber cigarette-holder and puff a cheap cigarette, winking at
the shocked crochet tidy on the patent rocker. Mother sniffed at him and
said that he acted like a young smart Aleck, but he would merely grin in
answer and coax her out for a walk.

As they paraded, the sun shone through the fuzzy, silver hair that
puffed out round Father's crab-apple face, and an echo of delicate
silver was on Mother's rose-leaf cheeks.

They were rustic as a meadow-ringed orchard, yet Father and Mother had
been born in New York City, and there lived for more than sixty years.
Father was a perfectly able clerk in Pilkings's shoe-store on Sixth
Avenue, and Pilkings was so much older than Father that he still called
him, "Hey you, Seth!" and still gave him advice about handling lady
customers. For