Elizabeth's promised explanation to the father of the culprits above stairs led to a spirited discussion between the husband and wife, after Miss Tripp had retired to her apartment.

"Poor little kids," Sam Brewster said whimsically. "I believe I'm glad I'm not your child, Betty,—I mean, of course, that I'm glad I'm your husband," he amended quickly, as her unsmiling eyes reproached him. "Don't you think you were a little hard on them, though?"

"Hard on them?" she echoed indignantly. "You're much more severe with the children than I am, Sam,—when you're at home. You know you are."

He smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two before replying. "Look here, Betty," he said at last, "you're right in a way. I'm not half so patient as you are, I'll admit. But I wonder if we don't all miss the mark when it comes to disciplining children?—Wait—just a minute before you answer. I've been thinking a whole lot about this business of home rule since we—er—discussed it the other day, and I've come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to let universal law take its course with them. They are human beings, my dear, and they've got to come up against the law in its broader sense sooner or later. Let 'em begin right now."

She was eyeing him pityingly. "And by that you mean——?"

"I mean," he went on, warming to his subject, "that you've got to teach a child what it means to reap what he sows. If Richard wants to put his finger on the stove and investigate the phenomenon of calorics, let him. He won't do it twice."

"And if he wants to paddle in the aquarium of a cold winter day, you'd——"

"Let him—of course," said Sam stoutly. "He'd feel uncomfortably damp and chilly after a while."

"Yes; and have the croup or pneumonia that same night."

"You're hopelessly old-fashioned, Betty," he laughed; "you shouldn't introduce the croup or pneumonia idea into the infant consciousness. But seriously, my dear, I believe I'm right. If you don't teach the children to recognise the relation between cause and effect now—so that it becomes second nature to them, how are they going to understand the subject when they're put up against it later? You'll find the mother bird and the mother bear, and, in fact, all the animal creation carefully instilling the idea of cause and effect into their offspring from the very beginning; while human parents are as constantly protecting their children from the effects of the causes which the children ignorantly set in motion. In other words we persist in undoing the work of old 'Mother Be-done-by-as-you-did.' It's a blunder, in my opinion. But of course, I'm a mere man and my ideas are not entitled to much consideration."

Elizabeth gazed at her husband with open admiration. "Of course they are entitled to consideration," she said decidedly. "And I believe what you have said—with reservations. Suppose Baby Dick, for example, should lean out of the window too far—a second-story window, I mean—and I should see him doing it and feel pretty certain he was going to pitch out head first and cripple himself for life. Do you think I ought to stand still and let the law of gravitation teach him not to do it a second time?"

Sam Brewster laid down his pipe and gazed steadfastly at his wife. She was looking extremely young and bewitchingly pretty as she leaned toward him, her cheeks pink, her brown eyes glowing with earnestness in which he thought he detected a spark of her old girlish mischief.

"'And still the wonder grew,'" he quoted solemnly, "'that one small head could carry all she knew!'"

"Please answer me, Sam," she insisted.

"Well, of course you've got me. You'd have to haul in the young person by the heels, and——"

"And what, exactly, if you please?"

"You might illustrate—with some fragile, concrete object, like an egg—as to what would happen if he fell out," said Sam, with exceeding mildness, "and——"

"In other words," she interrupted him triumphantly, "I ought to interfere some of the time between cause and effect. The question being when to interfere and when not to."

"Exactly!" he said, planting an irrelevant kiss on the pink cheek nearest him. "And that, my dear Betty, is your job—and, of course, mine, when I'm here. But I still hold that the natural penalty is best—when it's convincingly painful yet entirely innocuous."

"What is the natural penalty for eating cookies out of the box when you've been forbidden to do it?" she wanted to know.

He chuckled as certain memories of his boyhood came back to him. "My word!" he said, "I wish I could ever taste anything half as good as the cookies out of Aunt Julia Brewster's crock—it was a cooky-crock in those days. Of course I was forbidden to go to it without permission, and also of course I did it."

"What happened?" she demanded, the mischief growing bolder in her eyes.

He reflected. "Aunt Julia wouldn't let me have any at table on several occasions; but I—er—regret to say that I was not duly impressed by the punishment. A cooky—one cooky—decorously taken from a china plate at the conclusion of a meal did not, in my youthful opinion, court comparison with six—eight—ten cookies, moist and spicy from their seclusion and eaten with an uncloyed appetite. Let's—er—change the subject for the moment, my dear. Of course I'm right, but I appear to be hopelessly treed. Tell me how our friend Miss Tripp is getting on. She appeared somewhat depressed at dinner-time, and I didn't like to ask for information for fear there was nothing doing."

Elizabeth sighed sympathetically. "Evelyn had a dreadfully disappointing day," she told him. "But"—her eyes dancing again—"she met Mr. Hickey down town, and he actually invited her to lunch with him."

Sam whistled softly. "Hickey is progressing," he said approvingly. "Did he take her to the business men's lunchroom? Hickey has conscientious scruples against going anywhere else. I asked him into Colby's one day and he declined on the ground of his duty as a constant patron of the B. M. L. He said his table was reserved for him there by the season, and——"

"How absurd!" laughed Elizabeth. "But, I was going to tell you; Evelyn remembered another engagement, and so——" she stopped short, her eyes growing luminous. "Sam," she said suddenly, "I don't know what to think of Evelyn; she really didn't have any lunch at all; she said so when she came. I made her a cup of tea; she looked so worn and tired. I wonder if Mr. Hickey could have said anything, or—— What do you think, Sam?"

Sam yawned behind his paper. "I'm really too sleepy to give to the question the profound attention which it merits; but to-morrow when my intellect is fresh and keen, I'll endeavour to——"

"You mean you don't care."

"Suppose I did care, my very dear Betty; suppose my whole career depended upon what Hickey said—or didn't say; what could I do about it?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Sam," said his Elizabeth meekly. But her eyes were still full of speculative curiosity as she went up-stairs.