We both laughed so heartily that Mr. Baxter called, “Come; don’t keep such a good story to yourselves.” “Pretend you are so engrossed that you didn’t hear,” advised Kate, simulating the utmost interest. “Aren’t we doing well?” “Thanks to you,” was my gallant reply. “Thanks to the Cortelyous,” she declared. “They might have known,” said I, “that we’d never have a public circus to please them.” “Isn’t it nice,” she responded, “since we had to have a fracas, that it should be between ladies and gentlemen?” “Isn’t it?” I acceded. “Just supposing there had been some cad concerned, who would have written to the papers and talked to reporters!” “That was impossible, because we are all Cortelyous,” explained Kate. I like a girl who stands up for her stock. “Yes,” I assented. “And that’s the one advantage of family rows.” “I want to tell you,” she went on, “that you do my father a great injustice. Some natures are silent in grief or pain, and some must cry out. Because he talks, merely means that he suffers.” I longed to quote her remark about leaving her father out of the conversation, but having told her there were no cads in the family, the quotation was unavailable. So I merely observed, “Not knowing Mr. Dabney Cortelyou, I have had no chance to do him justice.” “But what you hear—” she began, with the proudest of looks; and it really hurt me to have to interrupt her by saying,— “Since I only get word of him from his dearest friends I am forced to take a somewhat jaundiced view of him.” “I suppose you are surrounded by toadies who pretend to know him,” she said contemptuously. I was not to be made angry. I was enjoying the dinner too much. “It would be a very terrible thing for our mutual friends,” I continued, “if the breach were ever healed, and we exchanged notes as to their tattling.” “Fortunately they are in no danger,” she answered, more cheerfully—indeed I might say, more gleefully—than it seemed to me the occasion required. “Fortunately,” I agreed, out of self-respect. Then I weakened a little by adding, “But what a pity it is you and I didn’t have the settling of that farm-line!” “My father could not have acted otherwise,” she challenged back. “And the courts decided that my grandfather was right.” “I should have done just as he did,” she replied. “Then you acknowledge my grandfather was right?” “I!”—indignantly. “You just assured me you should have done as he did!” I teased, laughing. “No. Of course both of them were justified in everything but in their making a legal matter a family quarrel. If we had had it to do, it would have been done amicably, I think.” “What makes you so sure?” she asked. “Because I am sweet-tempered, and you—” She wouldn’t accept a compliment from an enemy, so interrupted me with, “My father has one of the finest natures I have ever known.” “‘Physician, know thyself,’” I quoted, getting in the compliment in spite of her. “That’s more than you do,” she replied merrily.