She objected to Muldoon because he shed hairs on the rugs. But she had tolerated him for Wint’s sake. Muldoon thoroughly understood her feelings; he used to sit with his head on one side and bark at her while she brushed up those tawny hairs and scolded at him. She declared he was laughing at her. More than once, Wint had been forced to make peace between them. Muldoon did not seem surprised that they were going home; he took it quite as a matter of course. In fact, it is doubtful whether he noticed the change at all. Home, to Muldoon, was where Wint was. For that is the way of the dog. So Wint went home, and Hardiston talked it over. V. R. Kite was glad to hear it. It meant, he decided, that Wint had shifted allegiance from Amos to his father; and while Kite had always mistrusted the elder Chase, he felt they had a common bond in their mutual antagonism toward Amos. Kite, in the last few months, had conceived a new respect for Winthrop Chase, Senior. “Chase,” he was accustomed to say, “is a man of sense. Yes, sir; a man of sense.” Joan was glad; she found occasion to tell Wint so, simply and without elaboration. Wint said awkwardly: “Yes, I’m glad too. I guess it’s better.” And they never mentioned the change again. James T. Hollow, the little man whom Caretall had put up for Mayor against Chase, resented Wint’s move. “It’s desertion,” he told Peter Gergue. “He is deserting Congressman Caretall; and after all the Congressman has done for him. It’s not the right thing to do, Peter.” Gergue spat, and rummaged through his hair. “Can’t always do what’s right,” he said. “I’m afraid Amos will resent this,” Hollow went on. Peter said he shouldn’t wonder. “If he does object, guess he’ll know how to show it,” he remarked. And Hollow agreed, and added admiringly that Amos always seemed to know just the right thing to do. The _Hardiston Sun_ and the _Journal_ were both friendly to Winthrop Chase, Senior; so Skinner and B. B. Beecham made no comment on Wint’s change of residence. But the semi-weekly _Herald_, which was an outcast with its hand against every man, politically speaking, said, under a headline: “The Prodigal Returns,” that Wint, “whose break with the elder Chase dates from the election, when Senior was made a laughingstock before the state, has returned to the parental rooftree. Please omit fatted calves.” Sam O’Brien, the fat restaurant man, told Ned Bentley it was a good thing. “Young Wint’s a fine lad,” he said. “And he’s on the right track. Does no good, never, to break with your blood and kin.” Thus each took his own point of view. It was a poor citizen of Hardiston who had nothing to say about the matter, except that those most concerned had nothing to say at all.