It was the restlessness of the world’s youth that stirred her--Modern Youth opening millions of clear young eyes to gaze upon the wonders of a new Heaven and a new earth, and mad to explore it all from zenith to depths--sky, sea, land, and the waters under the earth. Youth, suddenly crazed by an overwhelming desire for Truth, after æons and æons of lies. Explore, venture, achieve, live--demand Truth, exact it, face it, and _know_!--the mighty, voiceless cry of the World’s Youth--claiming freedom to seek, liberty to live, fearless, untrammelled, triumphant. A terrible indictment of Age, and of those age-governed æons which forever have passed away. Already the older, duller generation caught the vast vibration of young hearts beating to arms, young voices swelling the tremulous, universal cry of insurgence, a clear, ceaseless, sea-like sound of laughter proclaiming the death of Sham--ringing an endless, silvery requiem. * * * * * Odell shoved up his spectacles and lowered the newspaper to glance at Eris. “What say?” he repeated fretfully. “I’d like to study dancing.” “Can’t you dance? You go to enough socials and showers ’n’one thing ’n’other.” “I mean--stage dancing.” “Stage!” he thundered. “Be you crazy?” “Why, Eris, how you talk!” said her stepmother, too astounded to laugh. “I could go to New York and work in a store by day; and take stage-dancing lessons evenings,” murmured the girl. “I want to be somebody.” “You stay here and do your chores and try to act as if you ain’t a little loonatic!” shouted Odell. “I’m sicka hearing about the capers and kickups of young folks nowaday. Them gallivantins don’t go in my house. I’m sicka reading about ’em, too. And that’s _that_!” “After all,” said Eris, “why do I have to do what I don’t care to do?” “Dang it,” retorted her father, “didn’t you never hear of dooty? What d’they teach you in school?” “Nothing much,” she replied listlessly. “Did you always want to be a farmer, daddy?” “Hey?” “Are you a farmer because you wanted to be? Or did you want to be something else?” “What dinged trash you talk,” he said, disgusted. “I didn’t wanta be a blacksmith or I’da been one.” “Why can’t _I_ be what I’d like to be? Will you tell me why?” Odell, speechless, resumed his newspaper. It was nearly nine o’clock and he hadn’t read half the local news and none of the column devoted to the Grange. Eris looked wistfully at him, loitering still in the doorway, slim, grey-eyed, undeveloped. Her stepmother laughed at her: “Notions,” she said. “Don’t you know you’d go to rack and rooin that way? You go to bed, Eris.... There’s fresh ginger snaps in the pantry.” CHAPTER III Until the Great War turned the world upside down, Whitewater Farms made money after Odell married Ed Lister’s daughter. Shortage of labour during the war cut into profits; taxes wiped them out; the ugly, Bolshevik attitude of labour after the war caused a deficit.