Jeff was perpetually dwelling upon Addington, torn between the factions of the new and old. He asked Lydia seriously what she should recommend doing, to make good citizens out of bamboozled aliens. Lydia had but one answer. She should, she said, teach them to dance. Then you could get acquainted with them. You couldn't get acquainted if you set them down to language lessons or religious teaching, or tried to make them read the Constitution. If people had some fun together, Lydia thought, they pretty soon got to understand one another because they were doing a thing they liked, and one couldn't do it so well alone. That was her recipe. Jeff didn't take much stock in it. He was not wise enough to remember how eloquent are the mouths of babes. He went to Miss Amabel as being an expert in sympathy, and found her shy of him. She was on the veranda, shelling peas, and in her checked muslin with father's portrait braided round with mother's hair pinning together her embroidered collar. To Jeff, clad in his blue working-clothes, she looked like motherhood and sainthood blended. He sat himself down on the lower step, clasped his knees and watched her, following the movements of her plump hands. "We can't get too homesick for old Addington while we have you to look at," said he. She stopped working for one pod's space and looked at him. "Are you homesick for old Addington?" she asked. "Alston Choate says that. He says it's a homesick world." "He's dead right," said Jeff. "What do you want of old Addington?" said she. "What do we need we haven't got?" Jeff thought of several words, but they wouldn't answer. Beauty? No, old Addington was oftener funny than not. There was no beauty in a pint-pot. Even the echoes there rang thin. Peace? But he was the last man to go to sleep over the task of the day. "I just want old Addington," he said. "Anyway I want to drop in to it as you'd drop into the movies. I want to hesitate on the brink of doing things that shock people. Nobody's shocked at anything now. I want to see the blush of modesty. Amabel, it's all faded out." She looked at him, distressed. "Jeff," said she, "do you think our young people are not--what they were?" He loved her beautiful indirection. "I don't want 'em to be what they were," said he, "if they have to lie to do it. I don't know exactly what I do want. Only I'm homesick for old Addington. Amabel, what should you say to my going into kindergarten work?" "You always did joke me," said she. "Get a rise out of me? Is that what you call it?" "I'm as sober as an owl," said Jeff. "I want these pesky Poles and Syrians and all the rest of them to learn what they're up against when they come over here to run the government. I'm on the verge, Amabel, of hiring a hall and an interpreter, and teaching 'em something about American history, if there's anything to teach that isn't disgraceful." "And yet," said she, "when Weedon Moore talks to those same men you go and break up the meeting."