I was loth to force my presence on mother, but by this time my hospitable young friend had pulled the portières so strenuously that they parted from the pole, and I was presented willy nilly to the collector of antiquities, who had the angular sharp-cut face and form of a rocking horse. She was seated at a table strewn with books and papers, writing at a rate of speed that convinced me she was in the throes of an inspiration. I forebore to interrupt. My scruples, however, were not shared by her eldest son. He gave her elbow a jog of reminder which sent her pencil to the floor. "Mother!" he shouted in megaphone voice, "here's the man next door--the one we get our soup plates from." She looked up abstractedly. "Oh," she said in dismayed tone, "I thought you had gone. I am very much engaged in writing a paper on modern antiquities." I murmured some sort of an apology for my untimely interruption. "I am so absorbed in my great work," she explained, "that I am oblivious to all else. I have the rare and great gift of concentration in a marked degree." I was quite sure of this fact. She took another pencil from a supply box and resumed her literary occupation. As my presence seemed of so little moment, I lingered. "Mother," shouted one of the boys, snatching the pencil from her grasp, "I'm hungry. I didn't have any supper." "Yes, you did!" she asserted. "I saw Gladys give you a bowl of bread and milk." "Emerald took it away from me and drank it up." "Didn't neither!" denied a shaggy looking boy. "I spilled it." He accompanied this denial by a fierce punch in his accuser's ribs. "Here!" said the author of Modern Antiquities, taking a nickel from her pocket, "go get yourself some popcorn, Demetrius." "I ain't Demetrius! I'm Pythagoras." "It makes no difference. Go and get it and don't speak to me again tonight." The boy had already snatched the coin, and he now started for the exit, but his outgoing way was instantly blocked by a promiscuous pack of pugilistic Polydores, and an ardent and general onslaught followed. I endeavored to untangle the arms and legs of the attackers and the attacked in a desire to rescue the youngest, a child of two, but I soon beat a retreat, having no mind to become a punching bag for Polydores. The concentrator at the writing table, looking up vaguely, perceived the general joust. "How provoking!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I was in search of an antonym and now they've driven it out of my memory." I politely offered my sympathy for her loss. "Did you ever see such misbehaved children?" she asked casually and impersonally as she calmly surveyed the free-for-all fight. [Illustration: Dr. Felix Polydore] "Children always misbehave before company," I remarked propitiatingly. "Of course they know better." "Why no, they don't!" she declared, looking at me in surprise, "they----"