The wheels of the Judge's buggy grate upon the curbing nearby and the Captain remarks: "Judge Tom gets in a little later every night now. I heard him dump her in at eight, and here it is nearly eleven--pretty careless,--pretty careless; he oughtn't to be getting in this late for four or five years yet--what say?" Public opinion again is divided. Fashion and the fine arts hold that it is Margaret's fault and that she is growing to be too much of a poseur; but the schools, which are the bulwarks of our liberties, maintain that he is just as bad as she. And what is more to the point--such is the contention of the eldest Miss Morton of the fourth grade in the Lincoln school, he has driven around to the school twice this spring to take little Lila out riding, and even though her mother has told the teachers to let the child go if she cared to, the little girl would not go and he was mean to the principal and insolent, though Heaven knows it is not the principal's fault, and if the janitor hadn't been standing right there--but it really makes little difference what would have happened; for the janitor in every school building, as every one knows, is a fierce and awesome creature who keeps more dreadful things from happening that never would have happened than any other single agency in the world. The point which the eldest Miss Morton was accenting was this, that he should have thought of Lila before he got his divorce. Now the worlds of fashion and the fine arts and the schools themselves, bulwarks that they are, do not realize how keenly a proud man's heart must be touched if day by day he meets the little girl upon the street, sees her growing out of babyhood into childhood, a sweet, bright, lovable child, and he yearns for something sincere, something that has no poses, something that will love him for himself. So he swallows a lump of pride as large as his handsome head, and drives to the school house to see his child--and is denied. In the Captain's household they do not know what that means. For in the Captain's household which includes a six room house--not counting the new white painted bathroom, the joint product of the toil of the handsome Miss Morton and the eldest Miss Morton, and not counting the basket for the kitten christened Epaminondas, and maintained by the youngest Miss Morton over family protests--in the Captain's household there is peace and joy, if one excepts the numbing fear of a "step" that sometimes prostrates the eldest Miss Morton and her handsome sister; a fear that shelters their father against the wily designs of their sex upon a meek and defenseless and rather obliging gentleman. So they cannot put themselves in the place of the rich and powerful neighbors next door. The Mortons hear the thorns crackling under the pot, but they cannot appreciate the heat. And now we come to the last picture. It is still an evening in May!