This answer took the doctor unawares, and he lost his gravity at once. Besides, being a true believer in the absolute equal rights of all human beings, the case had not seemed half so shocking as he would have it appear to Dan. His conscience accused him, and he said, smiling, “Well, my boy, I like your frankness. I heard a witty woman say once that if men, with their present moral standard, were suddenly to be transformed into women, they would all be on the town in a week. The fact is, neither sex should be kept by the other. Independence, honest self-support, by honest, productive industry, is the thing for women as well as men;” and as the doctor turned to empty his pipe into the grate, he asked Dan how much money he wanted to establish his livery business. Dan explained, with minute detail, just how matters stood, how fortunate the opening, how little the investment required, how certain the success. The doctor promised the funds, confessing at the same time that he had little faith, but that he could not endure that his son should think his father lacking in the desire to help him. “I much prefer you should think me a fool, my boy, than that you should believe me cold-blooded and calculating in my dealings with any one.” Now the thing was done, the doctor had to meet his wife and try to convince her, what he did not believe himself, that he had acted wisely. He failed miserably, and she wore an injured, martyr air for days, not at all comforted by his justification, which was the old saw, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” Dan would not be persuaded to change his mind and enter some other business. He talked of horses till she was glad to drop the subject; and in three months had lost everything. The doctor paid his debts, but said not one word of reproach, and Dan went back to the railroad, fully persuaded that he would have made money enough could he only have had more to throw away. CHAPTER VIII. PHILOSOPHY VANQUISHED. One night, some months before Clara’s final return from Stonybrook, the doctor returned home weary and “cross,” as he said. To the twins this used to mean that he was not in the humor to enjoy their clambering over him; but they felt themselves young ladies now, and “cross” meant that the doctor hoped they had done their piano practising during the day. Their torturing the piano was something endless and excruciating, but the doctor bore all domestic annoyances with the kind, long-suffering spirit that characterized the good family man—the great man, indeed—that he really was.