"Yes," Mrs. Blair hastened to say. "We drove out the Ludlow a long way." "She was riding last night, too," said Connie. "Who with?" demanded Chad, turning to Connie with the challenge he always had ready for her. "Who with?" retorted Connie. "Why, Glenn Marley, of course. Who else?" "Well, what of it?" demanded Chad. "What's it to you?" "Oh, children, children!" protested Mrs. Blair, wearily. "Do give us a little peace!" "Well, she began it," said Chad. Connie was eating savagely, but she whirled on Chad, speaking with difficulty because her mouth was filled with food: "You shut up, will you?" Chad laughed with a contempt almost theatrical, waved his hand lightly and said: "Run away, little girl, run away." Mrs. Blair asked the judge why he did not correct his children, and though the sigh he gave expressed the hopelessness, as it seemed to him, of bringing the two younger members of his train into anything like decorous behavior, he laid his knife and fork in his plate. "This must cease," he said. "It is scandalous. One might conclude that you were the children of some family in Lighttown." "It is very trying," said Mrs. Blair, acquiescing in her husband's reproof. "They are just like fire and tow." She said this quite impersonally and then turned to Connie: "If you can't behave yourself, I'll have to send you from the table." "That's it!" wailed Connie. "That's it! Blame everything on to me!" Mrs. Blair looked severely at her, and Connie's face reddened. She glanced angrily at her mother and began again: "Well, I--" The judge rapped the table smartly with his knuckles. "Now I want this stopped!" he said. "And right away. If it isn't I'll--" He was about to say if it wasn't he would clear the room, as he was fond of saying whenever the idle spectators in his court showed signs of being human, but he did not finish his sentence. Chad was subdued and decorous, and Connie drooped her head, and began to gulp her food. Her eyes were filling with tears and the tears began to fall, slowly, one by one, splashing heavily into her plate. Lavinia was trembling; she tried to control herself, tried to lift her glass, but when she did, her hand shook so that the water was likely to spill. This completed the undoing of her nerves, her eyes suddenly flooded with tears, and she snatched her handkerchief from her lap, rose precipitately, and hurried from the room, dropping her napkin as she went. They heard her going up the stairs, and presently the door of her room closed. Connie had followed Lavinia with her misty eyes as she left the table and now she too prepared to leave. She felt a sudden pity springing from her great love of her older sister, and her great pride in her, and she felt a contrition, though she tried to convict Chad, as the latest object of her fiery and erratic temper, by glowering at him. "I'll go to her," she said, "_I_ can comfort her!" "No, stay where you are," said her mother. "Just leave her alone."