However, Annette Crane’s children were more quiet, more simply dressed than most American children. They had escaped, to a great degree, the demoralising influences of children’s magazines, “The Children’s Page” in newspapers, and children’s plays, and they had not been amused to death. Annette, it is true, had not mastered the science of managing servants, but in that she was at one with the women of other parts of the country, except the South--for, as Senator Hoar once remarked on the floor of the Senate, as a preliminary to a ferocious attack on the South, it is the Southerners alone, in this country, who have the habit of command. Annette Crane, however, although she could no more manage her household staff of one maid-of-all-work than Mrs. James Brentwood Baldwin or Mrs. Hill-Smith could manage her retinue of English flunkeys and French maids, yet, by tact and judgment, succeeded in keeping the maid-of-all-work within bounds--which is more than the Brentwood Baldwins and the Hill-Smiths could do with their maids and flunkeys. On the journey with Thorndyke, not one word had passed Annette’s lips to indicate any rift between her husband and herself. She spoke of him frankly and affectionately. But the two children showed none of that happy eagerness to meet their father which the average American child shows to meet a dutiful and obedient parent. This did not escape Thorndyke, and amazed him. He had the usual bachelor’s fear and dread of children, but two days and nights of travel with little Roger and Elizabeth Crane had placed him upon terms of perfect intimacy with them. Roger had climbed all over him, and Thorndyke, instead of resenting it, had been secretly pleased at it. He had wrung permission from Annette to take the boy into the smoking-car with him occasionally, and Roger emerged with many mannish airs for his eight years. Thorndyke’s berth was at the other end of the sleeper from Annette’s and her children, and on the second night, when Thorndyke turned in, he found the youngster had eluded his mother’s vigilant eye, and had crawled into Thorndyke’s berth for a talk about Indians. Thorndyke not only submitted to this, but permitted Roger to send word to his mother by the porter that he would sleep in Mr. Thorndyke’s berth, because Mr. Thorndyke had asked him--and the two of them managed to defy Annette in the matter. Little Elizabeth took an extreme fancy to Thorndyke, and inquired if she might ask Mr. Thorndyke to be her uncle Thorndyke.