Mrs. Baron led the way into the dining-room and took a seat in the bay window overlooking the anæmic grass-plot. “Yes--entirely wrong,” she responded. “Do you know what this country had after the Civil War?” “Of course. It had peace.” “It had reconstruction.” “Oh!--reconstruction. Certainly.” “_That’s_ what I’m going to have in this household.” “All in favor of reconstruction will signify--” began Baron lightly. But his mother interrupted him quite sharply. “I don’t intend to be annoyed any more by that man Addis,” she declared, a flush mounting to her cheeks. “Oh,” said Baron, for the first time comprehending. “And my part in the--the new order of things is to begin snubbing him?” “I don’t care if you look at it in that way. I don’t intend he shall come here.” Baron looked at her thoughtfully. “My difficulty is,” he said, “that I understand your position, and his, too. And Flora’s. Addis is an awfully decent chap. I think you don’t look at him quite right. He’s got lots of friends of the right sort. Men friends. He doesn’t go in for the--oh, the ladylike things. But he belongs to the hunting clubs, and some of the best commercial clubs, and--well, I’m sure he’s every inch a man.” “So far as we’re concerned, he’s every inch a grocer.” Baron winced. “Oh, mother!” he protested, and after an interval of silence, “mother!” he exclaimed, “what are we? What am I? A loafer, living off a woman’s money; depending on my parents; having no prospects of my own making. There are times when I wish I had learned how to be a grocer, or a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or anything that would give me a place I could put a label on. Honestly, I don’t see that _I’ve_ got anything to make me look down on--on anybody.” Mrs. Baron was not at all impressed by this. “I won’t answer that sort of nonsense,” she said. “And as for Mr. Addis----” The door into the kitchen opened and Mrs. Shepard stood revealed. Her brow was furrowed. She looked beseechingly at Mrs. Baron. “Yes, right away,” said Mrs. Baron, rising. But she paused and looked at her son again. “And that--that unruly child who’s been letting him in. She’s to be taken in hand, too.” “Yes, mother?” “As long as she’s here you and Flora have got to quit treating her as if she were a--a fairy queen. It’s absurd. She’s got to be restrained and--and enlightened.” “I’m quite willing to do my part. The trouble is I’ve been too busy being enlightened by her to do very much enlightening on my part.” “Well, she hasn’t enlightened me at all. And I’ll be able to attend to her without a great deal of aid. She’s got to get down out of the clouds, to real things.” “She doesn’t seem to fit in with our kind of realities, does she?” he conceded. And then he smiled. “If it were only right to regard even children simply as human beings! They have to be themselves sooner or later. If it were only possible to let them develop along that line from the start!”