“It won’t do for that brother of yours,” his antagonist returned. “The Greeks are dead, and you can’t tie Dan and his sort down to a dead definition. The growth isn’t beautiful to you, but it is to them, or else they wouldn’t make it. Of course you’re sure you’re right about your own definition, but they’re so busy making what _they_’re sure is beautiful they don’t even know that anybody disagrees with them. It won’t do you the slightest good to disagree with them, either.” “Why not?” “Because they’ve got everything in their hands,” George McMillan replied cheerfully;—“and they’re too busy to listen to any one who isn’t making something besides criticisms.” “And for that reason,” Harlan began, “all of us who care for what’s quiet and cool and charming in life are to hold our peace and let——” He was interrupted, unable to make himself heard because of a shattering uproar that came from beyond the iron fence to the south. A long and narrow motor car, enamelled Chinese red, stood in the Oliphants’ driveway, and an undersized boy of sixteen had just run out of the house and jumped into the driver’s seat. Dusk had not fallen darkly; he saw the group upon the neighbouring veranda well enough, but either thought it too much effort to salute Martha and his uncles, or was preoccupied with the starting of his car;—he gave no sign of being aware of them. Evidently the unmuffled machine-gun firing of his exhaust was delightful to his young ears, for he increased its violence to the utmost, although the noise was unlawful, and continued it as he shot the car down the drive, out of the gates and down the street at a speed also unlawful. “There, at least,” Harlan said, “is something of which criticism might possibly be listened to with good effect—even by my busy brother.” But George laughed and shook his head. “No. That’s the very last thing he’d allow you to criticize. He’d only tell you that Henry is ‘the finest young man God ever made!’ In fact, that’s what he told me yesterday evening when I dined there; and I had more than a suspicion I’d caught a whiff of something suggesting a cocktail from our mutual nephew, as he came in for a hurried dinner between speedings. But that isn’t Dan’s fault.” “Yes, it is,” Harlan said. “Giving a sixteen-year-old boy a car like that!” “No, the fault is my sister’s. What’s a boy to do when his mother keeps him hanging around Paris so long in the autumn that it’s too late for him to make up his class-work, and he has only a tutor to cajole? I don’t blame Henry much. In fact, the older I grow the less I blame anything.” “No?” Harlan said. “I’m afraid the world won’t get anywhere very fast unless there are some people to point out its mistakes.”