Mr. Knapp stooped to look into the oven where a rice pudding was cooking. How ridiculous for a man to be cooking a rice pudding! “I’m sure I don’t know why you think you understand anything about it because I have not told you what my opinion on the subject is,” he said, over his shoulder. Stephen’s back became more acutely listening. He did not understand the big words and he could not make out his father’s tone, except that, unlike Mother, he did not get mad at Stephen and begin to pick on him whenever Mrs. Anderson had been there a little while. Mrs. Anderson did not make out Mr. Knapp’s tone very well herself, except that it was all part of his intense disagreeableness. A weak poor creature Lester Knapp was, a perfect failure at everything, and without even the poor virtue of knowing it. Besotted in self-conceit into the bargain, though she had never suspected that before. Poor Mrs. Knapp! And those poor children! Her mother’s heart ached for them, left in such hands. Mr. Knapp went on drawing his thread to and fro silently. Little by little, out of the air, Mrs. Anderson drew the information that she had been insulted, though she had not perceived exactly when. She felt rasped to the bone. With dignity, she drew her cape up around her shoulders and prepared to go. “Take the advice of an old woman who was bringing up children before you were _born_,” she said solemnly, her voice shaking with the depth of her feeling. “You’ll find out when it is too late that they _must be made to mind_! Everything depends on that. Mrs. Knapp, their poor mother, understood that perfectly.” “Good afternoon,” said Mr. Knapp, very distinctly. The door closed behind her ungently enough, and with its slam Lester Knapp felt himself transported by an invigorating wave of anger such as he had rarely felt in his life, simple, hot, vivifying rage as good as a drink of whiskey. It made him feel twice as alive as usual. “Strange thing, the human mind,” he thought rapidly. “When I ran into Mrs. Andersonism in business, it only made me sick, sort of hamstrung me with disgust. Anything they’d put their filthy hands on I’d rather _let_ them have than touch them enough to fight them. But when it threatens Stephen.... God! I _love_ to fight it! I’d enjoy strangling that old harpy with my two hands. She thinks she can bully me by threatening my vanity, does she? She thinks she can get her damned old hands on my little boy, does she? I should say it was enough to have killed four of her own.” He looked over at Stephen’s brooding back and set his stirred and sharpened wits to the problem of switching Stephen off from the track that was taking him towards one of his explosions. He had discovered that Stephen’s salvation at such times was something hard to do, something Stephen could struggle with, but not quarrel with. He thought fast, almost excitedly. Would he think of something first, or would Stephen blow up first?