And J. P. spoke by the book. He had lived with her for fifty years and he knew whereof he spoke. He was always prepared for anything and yet he was never able to maintain that air of philosophic calm with which he would have liked to have greeted each new ebullition of her tempestuous temperament. He pictured himself sometimes, in moments of reflection, treating her with cold contempt and silent scorn, but when each new issue arose he greeted it with an emotional outburst which was utterly futile in its effect on her, but which gave him some slight measure of satisfaction. A psychologist would have told him that his affection for his sister found expression in that way. We can never be coldly contemptuous of those we love. However, J. P. was no psychologist. The festivities in the other corner of the house lasted until nearly six o’clock and when the last guest had been given a gushing farewell by the arch Miss Fannie the hostess bounced into the library to meet her brother. She was attired in a short skirted pink silk afternoon gown that looked as if it might have been designed for a sixteen year old high school student, and she flounced into a sofa with an assumption of girlish ingenuousness that was really pathetic to watch. “I’ve just had the darlingest afternoon, brother dear,” she said gayly, not heeding the glowering aspect of the head of the house, who stood facing her with his hands in his trousers pockets. “We’ve had the spirit and the mystery of the great, inscrutable East with us and it’s been so uplifting and so perfectly wonderful that I’m in a daze. I’m sorry you didn’t meet the dear prince, brother dear. He’s so charmingly soulful and his eyes—well, they’re just deep pools of moonlight as some poet said. I’m giving a dinner for him on Friday night. You’ll have to come to that, of course.” Junius P. Easton tossed back his head and erupted. “I’ll be damned if I will,” he shouted, “and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you hob-nob with this fellow either. I’ve stood a lot from you Fannie, but there’s a limit. I didn’t put up much of a holler last winter when you had that greasy Esquimeaux here that evening with that polar explorer and I’ve stood for Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, South Sea Islanders, snake charmers, Bolshevists, shimmy dancers, poets and short haired female nuts, but I’m going to draw the line on darkies and don’t you forget it.” J. P. strode over to a long table, opened a humidor, extracted another cigar and savagely bit the end of it off. His sister was as unruffled as the placid surface of a mountain lake on a hot mid-summer day. She laughed a little before replying. It was such an irritatingly serene sort of a laugh that J. P. winced at the sound of it. “You poor, dear, foolish man,” she said with the patronizing condescension of an indulgent aunt rebuking a fractious boy aged about eight years. “He isn’t a colored man. You can be perfectly ridiculous at times.”