“Well, I don’t know. You pretty near know without any badges. You can tell the--the mixers, and the highbrows. I mean when they are the real thing--people worth while. I would know you for a mixer easy enough. I don’t mean careless, you know; but willing to loosen up a little if people went at you in the right way. And Flora would be a mixer, too--a nice, friendly mixer, as long as people behaved.” Here she turned with a heroic, friendly appeal to Mrs. Baron. “And Mrs. Baron would be one of the fine, sure-enough highbrows.” “I think,” began Mrs. Baron, suddenly possessed of an ominous calm; but the guest made an earnest plea. “Oh, please let me finish!” she begged. “Very well,” said Mrs. Baron, “you may--finish.” “You know I understand about your part in that entertainment this morning. _You_ don’t belong in that crowd. It’s like the queen who kissed the soldier. She was high enough up to do it and get away with it.” She placed her elbows on the table and beamed upon Mrs. Baron with a look so sweetly taunting, and so obviously conciliatory, that the others dared to hope the very audacity of it would succeed. “Now don’t deny,” she continued, shaking an accusing finger at Mrs. Baron and smiling angelically, “that you’re just a nice, sure-enough, first-class highbrow!” It was done with such innocent intention, and with so much skill, that all the members of Mrs. Baron’s family turned their faces toward her smilingly, appealingly, inquiringly. But alas! Mrs. Baron failed to rise to the occasion. She was being ridiculed--by a child!--and her children and her husband were countenancing the outrage. Her composure vanished again. She pushed her chair back from the table angrily. Her napkin fell to the floor; she grasped the edge of the table with both hands and stared at Bonnie May in a towering rage. “You little wretch!” she cried. “You impudent, ungrateful little wretch! You--you brand from the burning!” She hurried from the room. In her blind anger she bumped her shoulder against the door as she went out, the little accident robbing her exit of the last vestige of dignity. Bonnie May was horrified, crushed. She sat, pale and appalled, her eyes fixed on the doorway through which Mrs. Baron had vanished. Then she brought her hands together sharply and uttered a single word: “Hoo-ray!” Every member of the family was electrified. “Father!” expostulated Flora. “Victor!” exclaimed the elder Baron. And Baron, shaking his head sadly, murmured: “Bonnie May! Bonnie May!” CHAPTER X THE WHITE ELEPHANT Mrs. Baron “took to her room,” as the saying is. For an hour or more she might have been, to all intents and purposes, in some far country. She left an awed silence behind her.