Eric Mannering laughed, not ill-pleased. It was comfortable to be assured that it was of no use trying to influence these handsome and unmanageable children of his. It would have disturbed his placid laziness to argue. “I can’t understand,” he considered, “how people in general control their young. I never could.” And with entire amiability he let it go at that. “Your brother makes a corking speech, Miss Mannering.” She was driving next day with Eric and three other men, politicians, across the city to the great motor-factory. “He told me he did,” Honor answered, her gray eyes dancing. And the men laughed in a big chorus. “She’s a young infidel,” Eric asserted, laughing, too, “and has no respect for age or genius. If I could once stir her with a speech I’d consider I’d made a real hit. I don’t believe she knows what the Liberty Loan means, and as for the country, she takes no more responsibility for it than a squirrel up a tree.” “Not a patriot, Miss Mannering?” asked one of the men. “I’m surprised, with your family record--your grandfather the ambassador, and your great-grandfather the governor.” “I don’t believe I particularly belong to my family,” the girl reflected. “I don’t care about their record. If I can make my own way with my voice--make money--that’s all I want. I’m too busy with that to bother much about the country, you see.” And the men laughed again, not disapprovingly, because of her beauty and her youth, and thought Mannering’s young sister charmingly democratic. The car sped along miles of city, through streets which Honor had never known existed, and came to the Black-Lewis Factory, and turned into a large bare yard between buildings. Around the walls stood hundreds of men, marshalled compactly. The men in the car got out and shook hands with two or three who seemed to be in charge. Then, “Ready, kid,” Eric said to her. “Stand up in the car.” Honor caught her breath; she was frightened a little, unexpectedly. She was not used to audiences; but she stood in the tonneau of the car as Eric directed, tall and slim like a flower, and looked gravely, with a sudden shy dignity, at the observing faces of five hundred working men. “Now, Honor--‘America.’” The girl’s eyes lifted from all those eyes regarding her, lifted high to avoid that trying many-barrelled regard, and with that she caught a flash, from a building, of a flag tossing bright colors against the sky. To her astonishment a thrill caught her. “Isn’t it in you to consider your flag?” Eric had asked. There it was, the flag that had guarded her waking and sleeping all her life; it was in danger; enemies were waiting to dishonor it, to tear it down; suddenly her whole vigorous, fresh being rose to it in warmth and in loyalty. The flag! America! Into the dusty air, upward, the full notes poured: “My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing!”