"My dear Freedom," she would rebuke me, "I am the elder and I know what is best for youth. So long as I am here this household shall be conducted properly!" And nothing served to move her from that point of view. Well, upon the portentous evening when my rebellion began we were sitting as usual, promptly at five-thirty, in the cheerful if shabby dining room of our vast and dilapidated old mansion on Chestnut Street, with the sun shining brightly upon the neatly darned table linen, the zinnias from the garden and the few remaining bits of family silver. It can hardly be said that Old Sol spread his refulgent glory upon very much to eat, for he did not, there being nothing but a pot of tea, four very thin half slices of toast and the evening _Transcript_. According to her custom Euphemia looked at this first herself. "I perceive that the Republican Party is indignant with the Administration," she informed me. "And that a mail service is to be established by air from New York. How shocking! The postman will very likely drop things from the aëroplane! I don't approve of the Government taking such risks with other people's letters. It is positively unseemly. Letters should be brought to one's door by a person with a blue coat and a whistle." "They probably will be," I ventured. "The radical changes in life only affect the big things at first." Euphemia gave me a sharp look. "Don't think too much, Freedom," she admonished me. "It is unfeminine in a younger person. And take care--your jabot almost went into your tea!" I set down the cup, which I had in truth been holding in such a way that my lace cravat was endangered. I am occasionally rather given to daydreaming; a reprehensibly slack mental habit of which I have been unable wholly to break myself, and I was grateful for the merited reproof. Well, I set down the cup and put out my hand for the newspaper, which Euphemia, having glanced at the headlines, had finished reading. Again she rebuked me, this time with a gesture, and rang the bell. I subsided until the fourteen-year-old colored girl who constituted our domestic staff made her appearance, enveloped in a white apron which gave her a curiously grown-up appearance when viewed from the front, as it had been intended for an adult and reached the floor, but which, seen from the rear, revealed her immaturity. "Galadia, hand this paper to Miss Freedom!" said Euphemia with dignity. And when the child had complied: "That is all; you may go!" And Galadia made her exit, slamming the kitchen door behind which her voice immediately rose in song: _Kiss yo' Honey-Baby-Doll!_ "Good heavens!" exclaimed my sister, rising in wrath. "What ever will become of that child?"