On coming to the table that evening Claude begged his mother to excuse him for not having dressed for dinner, on the ground that he had an engagement with Billy Cheever. Mrs. Masterman pardoned him with a gracious inclination of the head that made her diamond ear-rings sparkle. No one in the room could be unaware that she disapproved of Claude's informality. Not only did it shock her personal delicacy to dine with men who concealed their shirt-bosoms under the waistcoats they had worn all day, but it contravened the aims by which during her entire married life she had endeavored to elevate the society around her. She herself was one to whom the refinements were as native as foliage to a tree. "It's all right, Claudie dear; but you do know I like you to dress for the evening, don't you?" Without waiting for the younger son to speak, she continued graciously to the elder: "And you, Thor. What have you been doing with yourself to-day?"

Her polite inclusion of her stepson was meant to start "her men," as she called them, in the kind of conversation in which men were most at ease, that which concerned themselves. Thor replied while consuming his soup in the manner acquired in Parisian and Viennese restaurants frequented by young men:

"Got a patient."

Hastily Claude introduced a subject of his own. "Ought to go and see 'The Champion,' father. Hear it's awfully good. Begins with a prize-fight—"

But the father's attention was given to Thor. "Who've you picked up?"

"Fay's wife—Fay, the gardener."

"Indeed? Have to whistle for your fee."

"Oh, I know that—"

"Thor, please!" Mrs. Masterman begged. "Don't eat so fast."

"If you know it already," the father continued, "I should think you'd have tried to squeak out of it." He said "know it alweady" and "twied to squeak," owing to a difficulty with the letter r which gave an appealing, childlike quality to his speech. "If you start in by taking patients who are not going to pay—"

Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him—what?"

"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to pauperize people"—he said "pauper-wize people"—"any more than any one else."

"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a doctor to pauperize poor Fay."

"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself."

Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal. "Claude and I have been talking him over—"

"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly.

"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons.

Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know anything about them. If you call that talking him over—well, you're welcome to your own use of terms."

The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been placed before him. "If you want information, Thor, ask me."

"I don't want information, father; and I don't think Claude is fair in saying I cross-questioned him. I only said that I thought he and I ought to do what we could to get you to renew Fay's lease."

"Oh, did you? Then I can save you the trouble, because I'm not going to."

The declaration was so definite that it left Thor with nothing to say. "Poor old Fay has worked pretty hard, hasn't he?" he ventured at last.

"Possibly. So have I."

"But with the difference that you've been prosperous, and he hasn't."

Masterman laughed good-naturedly. "Which is the difference between me and a good many other people. You don't blame me for that?"

"It's not a question of blaming any one, father. I only supposed that among Americans it was the correct thing for the lucky ones to come to the aid of the less fortunate."

"Take it that I'm doing that for Fay when I get him out of an impossible situation."

Thor smiled ruefully. "When you get him out of the frying-pan into the fire?"

"Well," Claude challenged, coming to his father's aid, "the fire's no worse than the frying-pan, and may be a little better."

"I've seen the girl," Mrs. Masterman contributed to the discussion. "She's been in the greenhouse when I've gone to buy flowers. I must say she didn't strike me very favorably." The two brothers exchanged glances without knowing why. "She seemed to me so much—so very much—above her station."

"What is her station?" Thor asked, bridling. "Her station's the same as ours, isn't it?"

The father was amused. "The same as what?"

"Surely we're all much of a muchness. Most of us were farmers and market-gardeners up to forty or fifty years ago. I've heard," he went on, utilizing the information he had received that afternoon, "that the Thorleys used to hire out to the Fays."

"Oh, the Thorleys!" Mrs. Masterman smiled.

"The Mastermans didn't," Archie said, gently. "You won't forget that, my boy. Whatever you may be on any other side, you come from a line of gentlemen on mine. Your grandfather Masterman was one of the best-known old-school physicians in this part of the country. His father before him was a Church of England clergyman in Derbyshire, who migrated to America because he'd become a Unitarian. Sort of idealist. Lot of 'em in those days. Time of Napoleon and Southey and Coleridge and all that. Thought that because America was a so-called republic, or a so-called democracy, he'd find people living for one another, and they were just looking out for number one like every one else. Your Uncle Sim takes after him. Died of a broken heart, I believe, because he didn't find the world made over new. But you see the sort of well-born, high-minded stock you sprang from."

Thor lifted his big frame to an erect position, throwing back his head. "I don't care a fig for what I sprang from, father. I don't even care much for what I am. It strikes me as far more important to see that our old friends and neighbors—who are just as good as we are—don't have to go under when we can keep them up."

"Yes, when we can," Thor's father said, with unperturbed gentleness; "but very often we can't. In a world where every one's swimming for his own dear life, those who can't swim have got to drown."

"But every one is not swimming for his own dear life. Most of us are safe on shore. You and I are, for example. And when we are, it seems to me the least we can do is to fling a life-preserver to the poor chaps who are throwing up their hands and sinking."

Mrs. Masterman rallied her stepson indulgently. "Oh, Thor, how ridiculous you are! How you talk!"

Claude patted his mother's hand. He was still trying to turn attention from bearing too directly on the Fays. "Don't listen to him, mumphy. Beastly socialist, that's what he is. Divide up all the money in the world so that everybody'll have thirty cents, and then tell 'em to go ahead and live regardless. That'd be his way of doing things."

But the father was more just. "Oh no, it wouldn't. Thor's no fool! Has some excellent ideas. A little exaggerated, perhaps, but that'll cure itself in time. Fault of youth. Good fault, too." He turned affectionately to his elder son, "Rather see you that way, my boy, than with an empty head."

Thor fell silent, from a sense of the futility of talking.