With Juliette avowedly rebellious, and Adele confessedly the square peg in the round hole, Selina when she said good-bye at the Caldwell's, went in the Addison house next door to get some comfort from Maud.

It was the middle of the morning, and Mrs. Addison, a big wholesome-looking, capable personage, was overseeing the hanging of fresh lace curtains in the parlors. She sent Selina on up to Maud's room, after, like Mrs. Caldwell, a plain-spoken word.

"Now that Maud's through with the novelty of refitting her room, though I saw nothing wrong with it before, she's gone back into complaining discontent again. What's the matter with you all, Selina?"

"I'm wondering myself, Mrs. Addison," said Selina truthfully.

She went on up. Maud was clearing the litter from a big deal table that certainly did not add anything to the looks of her room with its new blue carpet and blue paper and ruffled curtains and its still a-wee-bit-envied cottage furniture. Maud was going in for china painting right now and kept her equipment on the deal table. She exhibited the pitcher of a tea-set of three pieces.

"There's nothing to it, Selina; painting pink butterflies on a blue background doesn't satisfy one bit. In my heart, and you know it and I know it, too, I don't care a rap for decorated china tea-sets."

It was Maud's third essay into the arts since leaving school eighteen months ago. She had tried with two successive teachers to manufacture a voice which was not there, and also had taken a course in Kensington embroidery. A cover of blue felt cloth, done in drab cat-tails was on her reading-table now.

"I've just been over with Juliette," Selina explained.

"At least she knows what she does want, and that's a good deal," from Maud.

"She hates the bisque cupid as much as we do," Selina hastened to relate, "and hasn't said so. It's taken this last to make her disloyal."

"Maybe she hates herself at three on the rose-bank, too," surmised Maud. "Tell Adele and it'll cheer her. Algy's so hot over the treatment of Juliette at home, he goes around every single day to see her."

"And we didn't half take up his row that time when he wouldn't go to college. I'd almost forgotten till Juliette reminded me. Have you ever thought what a real dear Algy's always been? We haven't half estimated him? When persons do and do for you, you come to take it for granted? Think how we've always called on Algy?"

"I suppose," said Maud to this reflectively, as she stood at the washstand rinsing her hands of their paint stains, "we're all fools to some other intelligence. Algy's seemed slower than the rest of us. And now I want to read you a note from Mr. Welling showing where he puts me. As I just said, meaning myself as well as Algy, we're all fools to some other intelligence. Of course, Mr. Welling is older and has had college and has been about, but still it's trying. And I've been so altogether complacent, imagining he was getting value received in his visits round here, reading German with me, and all. Maybe he has been getting it in a sense I hadn't reckoned on," bitterly. "He asked me the other night, Selina, in that jocular way of his that one ought always to distrust, if I had read the editorial in the morning paper on our new democratic president's first message. I hadn't. I didn't know there was a message, and I knew I wasn't a bit bright as to just what a president's message is supposed to be. I had to formulate some sort of position though, and so as I went along, I said no, I never read the papers much, that Mamma glanced over the deaths and headlines and reported them while Papa ate his breakfast, and then Papa went off with the paper in his pocket. And I added that we were on the other side anyhow, that the Addisons had been Unionists, and were with the republican interests ever since."

"I know," said Selina hastily, this being the one thing about Maud and her family always hard to get around, and therefore a matter to refrain from dwelling on as far as possible.

Maud was continuing: "Mr. Welling looked at me in that prolonged, considering, quizzing way of his, his spectacles somehow always seeming to intensify the effect, you know what I mean, and with his lips pursed as if he were having a jolly good time for some unseen reason. He generally is when he looks that way, and at somebody else's expense, too. I hurried to add that of course I supposed I ought to show more interest in questions of the day and that perhaps I would if the papers were ever at hand around the house."

"I never read them much myself," agreed Selina, "except when something comes up that I hear Papa and Culpepper talking to each other about. Then I try to remember to look it up."

"Well, listen now to what followed. We're only highly diverting and amusing to 'em, Selina. This morning I received notices by mail of subscriptions in my name to two papers, one local and one not, and a note from Mr. Welling. Listen to it, Selina, and then you'll know what they think of us. He's laughing at me from the very start to the finish."

"My dear Miss Maud:

"I am going to hope that you will read the editorials in these two papers every day. It is unnecessary to say I have no sinister object in view such as putting that in your way which might influence you adversely to the political faith you say you have elected to move in. It is rather because I consider that newspapers typify the most virile and living English of our day, as well as embody the history of our own times, and for these reasons as well as for their perforce certain amount of incisive logic, are a means of disciplining and cultivating the mind. Such articles as appear in a reputable paper's editorial columns, not now and then, but in every issue of every first rate daily, will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption—"

Maud lowered the sheet of close-written paper and looked over at Selina. An indignant color glowed in her face. "You notice he restricts himself to the one pronoun, Selina, 'and cause her to form by absorption—— '"

"I did notice," agreed Selina unwillingly.

"Wait till you hear the whole of it," Maud lifted the pages and resumed:

—"will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to form by absorption, habits of logical contemplation and discussion which eventually will enable her to discern the salient points and the related elements of a question, than which there is no greater conscious pleasure. And when she arrives at that stage of development, to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?)—"

Again Maud lowered the page.

"There's a question mark in parenthesis after the 'finding out,' I ought to tell you, Selina. He was afraid the implication might escape me. Well, if he's amused, I suppose we ought to be willing to supply it to him."

She resumed:

"—to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?) what she means from what she says. I take it that intelligent thinking requires as much mental discipline as military action requires physical discipline. I trust you will not consider it a noblesse oblige to read the tariff articles too, though their disciplining effect would also be excellent. But if it requires any grinding, I beg of you to be certain you are acquitted of any obligation in this direction, resting upon the claim of so virulent a disciple to free trade as myself, suggesting it."

Maud flung the several pages down, and faced Selina. "There! Certainly you can see that he's laughing at me! What else can you make of it? And that's what they really think of us, Selina, and our attainments we rather flattered ourselves over."

"It—er—shows trouble he's taken, too," from Selina weakly and as she felt as she said it, without conviction.

"It shows an abysmal depth of pity, not to say hilarity with the pity," gloomily.

"Maud," from Selina with reluctance and hesitation, "what's free trade that he says he's such a virulent disciple of? Has it to do with the—er—tariff?"

"That's the trouble," bitterly. "I don't know."