"She is impossible!" Mrs. Payton sighed. "Why, she said 'Damn,' right out, before the Rev. Mr. Tait!"
"Did she damn Tait? I know him, and really—"
"Well, no; I think it was the weather. But that is nothing to the way she talks about old people."
"About me, perhaps?"
"Oh no; really, no! About you?" Mrs. Payton stammered; "why—how could she say anything about you?"
Arthur Weston's eyes twinkled. ("I'll make her tell me what it was," he promised himself.)
"As for age," Mrs. Childs corroborated, "she seems to have no respect for it. She spoke quite rudely to her uncle William about Shakespeare and Bacon. She said the subject 'bored' her."
Mr. Weston shook his head, speechless.
"And she said," Mrs. Childs went on, her usual detachment sharpening for a moment into personal displeasure, "she said the antis had no brains; and she knows I'm an anti!"
"Oh, my dear," Fred's mother condoled, "I'm an anti, and she says shocking things to me; once she said the antis were—I really can't say just what she said before Mr. Weston; but she implied they were—merely mothers. And as for her language! I was saying how perfectly shocked my dear old friend, Miss Maria Spencer, was over this Inn escapade; Miss Maria said that if it were known that Freddy had spent the night at the Inn with Mr. Maitland her reputation would be gone."
Mr. Weston's lips drew up for a whistle, but he frowned.
"I told Freddy, and what do you suppose she said? Really, I hesitate to repeat it."
"But dear Ellen," Mrs. Childs broke in, "it was horrid in Miss Spencer to say such a thing! I don't wonder Freddy was provoked."
"She brought it on herself," Mrs. Payton retorted. "Have another sandwich, Bessie? What she said is almost too shocking to quote. She said of my dear old friend—Miss Spencer used to be my school-teacher, Mr. Weston—'What difference does it make what she said about me? Everybody knows Miss Spencer is a silly old ass.' 'A silly old ass.' What do you think of that?" Mrs. Payton's voice trembled so with indignation that she did not hear Mr. Weston's gasp of laughter. But as she paused, wounded and ashamed, he was quick to console her:
"It was abominably disrespectful!"
"There is no such thing as reverence left in the world," said Mrs. Childs; "my William says he doesn't know what we are coming to."
"Youth is very cruel," Mr. Weston said.
Mrs. Payton's eyes filled. "Freddy is cruel," she said, simply. The wounded look in her worn face was pitiful. They both tried to comfort her; they denounced Freddy, and wondered at her, and agreed with Mr. Childs that "nobody knew what we were coming to." In fact, they said every possible thing except the one thing which, with entire accuracy, they might have said, namely, that Miss Spencer was a silly old ass.
"When I was a young lady," Mrs. Payton said, "respect for my elders would have made such words impossible."
"Even if you didn't respect them, you would have been respectful?" Mr. Weston suggested.
"We reverenced age because it was age," she agreed.
"Yes; in those happy days respect was not dependent upon desert," he said, ruefully. (Mrs. Childs looked at him uneasily; just what did he mean by that?) "It must have been very comfortable," he ruminated, "to be respected when you didn't deserve to be! This new state of things I don't like at all; I find that they size me up as I am, these youngsters, not as what they ought to think I am. One of my nephews told me the other day that I didn't know what I was talking about."
"Oh, my dear Mr. Weston, how shocking!" Mrs. Payton sympathized.
"Well, as it happened, I didn't," he said, mildly; "but how outrageous for the cub to recognize the fact."
"Perfectly outrageous!" said his hostess. "But it's just as Bessie says, they don't know the meaning of the word 'respect.' You should hear Freddy talk about her grandmother. The other day when I told her that my dear mother said that if women had the ballot, chivalry would die out and men wouldn't take off their hats in elevators when ladies were present—she said, 'Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.' What do you think of that! I'm sure I don't know what Freddy's father would have said if he had heard his daughter say such a thing about his mother-in-law."
Mr. Weston, having known the late Andy Payton, thought it unwise to quote the probable comment of the deceased. Instead, he tried to change the subject: "Howard Maitland is a nice chap; I wonder if—" he paused; there was a scuffle on the other side of the closed door, a bellowing laugh, then a whine. Mrs. Childs bit her lip and shivered. Mr. Weston's face was inscrutable. "I wonder," he continued, raising his voice—"if Fred will smile on Maitland? By the way, I hear he is going in for conchology seriously."
"Mortimore is nervous this afternoon," Mrs. Payton said, hurriedly; "that horrid puppy worried him. Conchology means shells, doesn't it? Freddy says he has a great collection of shells. I was thinking of sending him that old conch-shell I used to use to keep the parlor door open. Do you remember, Bessie? Yes, Mr. Maitland is attentive, but I don't know how serious it is. Of course, I'm the last person to know! Rather different from the time when a young man asked the girl's parents if he might pay his addresses, isn't it? Well, I want to tell you what she said when I spoke to her about this plan of earning her living (that's her latest fad, Mr. Weston), and told her that, as Mama says, it isn't done; she—"
"Oh, dear! There's the car coming," Mrs. Childs broke in, as the tinkle of the mules' bells made itself heard. "Do hurry and tell us, Nelly; I've got to go."
"But you mustn't! I want to know what you think about it all," Mrs. Payton said, distractedly; "wait for the next car."
"I'm so sorry, dear Ellen, but I really can't," her sister-in-law declared, rising. "Cheer up! I'm sure she'll settle down if she cares about Mr. Maitland. (I'm out of it!" she was thinking.) But even as she was congratulating herself, she was lost, for from the landing a fresh young voice called out:
"May I come in, Aunt Nelly? How do you do, Mr. Weston! Mama, I came to catch you and make you walk home. Mama has got to walk, she's getting so fat! Aunt Nelly, Howard Maitland is here; I met him on the door-step and brought him in."
CHAPTER II
Laura Childs came into the quiet, fire-lit room like a little whirl of fresh wind. The young man, looming up behind her in the doorway, clean-shaven, square-jawed, honest-eyed, gave a sunshiny grin of general friendliness and said he hoped Mrs. Payton would forgive him for butting in, but Fred had told him to call for some book she wanted him to read, and the maid didn't know anything about it.
"I thought perhaps she had left it with you," he said.
Mrs. Payton, conscious, as were the other two, of having talked about the speaker only a minute before, expressed flurried and embarrassed concern. She was so sorry! She couldn't imagine where the book was! She got up, and fumbled among the Flowers of Peace. "You don't remember the title?"
He shook his head. "Awfully sorry. I'm so stupid about all these deep books Fred's so keen on. Something about birth-rate and the higher education, I think."
Mrs. Payton stiffened visibly. "I don't know of any such book," she said; then murmured, perfunctorily, that he must have a cup of tea.
Again Mr. Maitland was sorry—"dreadfully sorry,"—but he had to go. He went; and the two ladies looked