The younger members of the brood were not involved in this graceless agitation. The complaints stopped with Guinivere. Harold, Rosemary and Rutherford were too young to realise the state of destitution into which the family had fallen. They were quite happy, contented and, so far, unaware of the gravity of a situation which was more or less apparent to their elders. Frederick, Marie Louise and Wilberforce formed the higher group of malcontents, and their mutterings reached the acute ears of a second and less formidable group composed of Reginald, Henrietta and Guinivere. The influence of the three older children, envied and imitated by the next three in order of age, was responsible for the inclusion of this second group in the general tendency toward unruliness and resentfulness. Mr. Bingle sensed this unhappy condition of affairs. His soul was sorely tried. Was he doing the right thing by these children? He was doing his best, but was his best all that they were entitled to under the circumstances? Was he depriving them of a bigger chance in life? He had taken them out of the byways, but was he leading them to the highways? The whining, peevish submission on the part of the larger boys and girls; the unmistakable interrogation that always lurked in their eyes; the frequent outbursts of temper; the quarrels that came up every day among them--all of these went to prove they were sliding back into the byways. There was no gainsaying that, he would say to himself. Insolence, insubordination grew apace. Once Frederick, in the heat of passion over a well-deserved rebuke, called him a "damned old fool." Moreover, was he doing right by Mrs. Bingle? Was it possible that she might never come back to him who loved her more than he could have loved even a child of his own? Would he be the one to blame? And so it came about that he finally consented to listen to the suggestions of the cold and unemotional Mrs. Force. The wife of the president of the bank was the sort of person who gets into the newspapers by all the hooks and crooks known to her sex. To begin with, she made charity a business. As Chairman of two or three organizations declaring for the betterment of society, high and low, she was quoted on nearly every question that came up for discussion in the public prints. She recognised the advantage in her day of being an anti-suffragist. She saw the value of associating herself with the movement to create and maintain a bureau for the distribution of high class literature among low class readers, and she belonged to a society which elevated the stage by giving Sunday night dress rehearsals for the benefit of destitute millionaires. She had a conspicuous box at the Opera, and encouraged the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals by appearing at the Horse Show in Madison Garden without spurs.