The conduct of the children at the luncheon table was marked by such unexampled propriety of manner that Mrs. Van Duser was visibly disappointed. She could hardly have been expected to know that Elizabeth had resorted to shameless bribery in advance of the meal with a shining coin in each small pocket, "to be spent exactly as you choose," and that Richard was taking his food in the kitchen under the lax supervision of the Norwegian maid. Still the occasion was not wholly barren of material for a trained psychologist, as Mrs. Van Duser was pleased to term herself.

"The psychophysical processes," she observed learnedly, "should be closely observed by the wise guardian, in order to properly graft desired complications on native reactions."

"I am afraid I do not altogether understand," murmured Elizabeth, secretly grateful that her guest's preoccupation of mind rendered her oblivious to the blunders of Celia, as she plodded heavily about the table. "But I should like to ask you, Mrs. Van Duser, if you approve of—whipping children?"

Mrs. Van Duser dropped her pencil and focussed her piercing regard upon the wife of her distant relative.

"Decidedly not, my dear Elizabeth," she enunciated in her deepest contralto. "Corporal punishment brutalises the child by implying that a rational being is, or may be, on the level of the animal. It can be only too evident that if one treats a child like an animal, it will behave like an animal. I will send you an excellent pamphlet on the subject, which you will do well to study. In the meantime you should remember——"

Mrs. Van Duser stopped short, raised her lorgnette and stared hard at Doris. That young person had suddenly left her chair and was whispering in her mother's ear, in the peculiar, sibilant whisper of an eager child.

"I'm through of my dinner, mother," was wafted distinctly to the attentive ears of the guest. "An' I want to go an' buy daddy's 'fumery this minute. You said I might, mother; you said I might.—Yes; but when is she going home, mother? when?"

Far from evincing displeasure the great lady displayed the sincerest gratification. "A most interesting example of ideation," she observed. "My dear Elizabeth, please explain the child's emotions, if you are aware of them. I fail to observe anger or dislike, or even—as might well be expected—awe. Why do you wish me to go home?" she inquired directly of Doris, who had retreated behind her mother's chair in pouting dismay.

Elizabeth experienced a hysterical desire to laugh; but she instantly repressed it. "You should explain to Mrs. Van Duser, Doris, that you spilled father's bay-rum this morning, and that mother said you must buy him a fresh bottle with your own money," she said soberly.

"I want to go now," whispered the child. "You said I might, mother; you promised!"

"Excellent!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Duser, writing rapidly in her book. "You really ought, my dear Elizabeth, to preserve a careful memoranda of these interesting mental movements of your offspring," she observed convincingly. "Every properly constructed parent should endeavour to so assist science. However crudely and unscientifically expressed, such records would prove of incalculable value to the student."

She turned to Doris with a complete change of manner. It was no longer the ontological Mrs. Van Duser, but the great lady from Beacon Street who spoke. "You have been very rude indeed, my child," she said sternly; "and little girls should never be rude; but I will take you with me in the carriage to purchase the toilet article referred to, and send you home afterwards, if your mother will permit."

As Elizabeth watched the flushed and triumphant Doris, departing in state in the Van Duser carriage, the jingling contents of her bank in her small pocket, she was conscious of a bewildering sense of failure. She had sincerely tried to impress a lesson of obedience and a respect for the rights of others upon the mind of her child, and, lo! the culprit was enjoying a long-wished-for treat!

The arrival of Miss Evelyn Tripp, in a hansom cab with a small much-belabelled trunk on top, successfully diverted her mind from this and other ethical problems. Miss Tripp's recent misfortunes had as yet left no traces on her slight, elegant personality. She entered quite in her old fashion, amid a subdued rustle of soft silken garments, a flutter of plumes and a gracious odour of violets.

"My dear!" she exclaimed, clasping and kissing Elizabeth, quite in the latest mode. "How well you are looking! Indeed, you are younger and far, far prettier than the day you were married! How vividly I remember that day, and I am sure you do! How I did work to have everything pass off as it should, and so many persons have told me since that it was really the sweetest wedding they ever saw! It hardly seems possible that it was so long ago. What! You don't tell me that great boy is Carroll! Come here and let Aunty Evelyn kiss you, dear. And Doris? She was such a dear, tiny thing when I saw her last. Oh, that is the baby; you say! No; Elizabeth—not that great child! Fancy! I declare I feel like a Methuselah when I look at my friend's children. I hate to grow old—really old; don't you know."

Miss Tripp paused to remove her plumed hat, while Elizabeth hastened to assure her friend that she really hadn't changed in the least. This was quite true, since Miss Tripp was of that somewhat thin and colourless type of American womanhood upon which the passing years appear to leave little trace.

"Oh, my dear!" sighed Miss Tripp, "I am changed; everything has changed with me, I assure you. Mother and I are obliged to live off air, exactly like wee little church mice. And I am simply worn to a fringe trying to economise and manage. I never was extravagant; you know that, dear, but now——. Well; I don't know what will become of us unless something happens."

"Something will happen, dear," said Elizabeth, more than ever warm-heartedly determined to make her friend as happy as herself. "Now I'm going to leave you to lie down and rest a little before dinner," she added guilefully, as she bethought herself of the various culinary operations already in progress under the unthinking control of Celia. "A friend of Sam's—a Mr. Hickey, chances to be dining here to-night; I hope you won't mind, dear. It—just happened so."

Miss Tripp turned to gaze searchingly at her friend. "You can't mean George Hickey—a civil engineer?" she asked.

"Why, yes; do you know him?"

"My dear; it's the oddest thing; but lately I seem to meet that man wherever I go. He is a friend of the Gerald Doolittles in Dorchester—you know who I mean—and spends a Sunday there occasionally; and when I was visiting Leticia Marston last fall, lo and behold! Mr. Hickey turned up there for the week end! I used to know him years ago when we were both children."

"Sam is associated with Mr. Hickey in a professional way," observed Elizabeth, with a careful indifference of manner. "He dines with us once in a while." She paused to listen, with her head on one side, while a look of alarm stole over her attentive face.

"What's the matter, dear?" inquired the unaccustomed Miss Tripp. "Do you hear anything?"

"No, Evelyn; I don't, and the silence is suspicious. I think I'll run down stairs and see what the boys are doing. Try and rest, dear, till I call you." And Elizabeth accomplished a hasty exit by way of the back stairs and the kitchen, where she was in time to frustrate the intelligent Celia as she was about putting the French peas over to boil an hour before dinner time. From thence she sought the sitting-room, where she had left her two sons amicably engaged in constructing a tall and wobbly tower out of building blocks. Carroll had vanished, and her amazed and indignant eyes lighted upon the person of her youngest son kneeling in a chair before the forbidden aquarium, over which he leaned in a state of rapturous oblivion of past experiences, his plump hands buried in the sand at the bottom of the tank, while the alarmed gold fish flashed in and out between the dripping sleeves of his freshly-ironed blouse.

"Richard Brewster!" she cried. Then wrath and a disheartening sense of the futility of unassisted moral suasion quite swept her off her feet. She seized the child and laying him across her lap in time-honoured fashion, handed down from a remote ancestry, spanked him with a speed and thoroughness not to be surpassed by Grandmother Carroll in her most energetic mood.

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