"But bless you, dear old girl," said Jeff, "Weedon was teaching 'em the rules for wearing the red flag. And I'm going to give 'em a straight tip about Old Glory. When I've got through with 'em, you won't know 'em from New Englanders dyed in the wool." She meditated. "If only you and Weedon would talk it over," she ventured, "and combine your forces. You're both so clever, Jeff." "Combine with Weedie? Not on your life. Why, I'm Weedie's antidote. He preaches riot and sedition, and I'm the dose taken as soon as you can get it down." Then she looked at him, though affectionately, in sad doubt, and Jeff saw he had, in some way, been supplanted in her confidence though not in her affection. He wouldn't push it. Amabel was too precious to be lost for kindergarten work. When they had talked a little more, but about topics less dangerous, the garden and the drought, he went away; but Amabel padded after him, bowl in hand. "Jeff," said she, "you must let me say how glad I am you and Weedon are really seeing things from the same point of view." "Don't make any mistake about that," said Jeff. "He's trying to bust Addington, and Tin trying to save it. And to do that I've got to bust Weedie himself." He went home then and put his case to Lydia, and asked her why, if Miss Amabel was so willing to teach the alien boy to read and teach the alien girl to sew, she should be so cold to his pedagogical ambitions. Lydia was curiously irresponsive, but at dusk she slipped away to Madame Beattie's. To Lydia, what used to be Esther's house had now become simply Madame Beattie's. She had her own shy way of getting in, so that she need not come on Esther nor trouble the decorous maid. Perhaps Lydia was a little afraid of Sophy, who spoke so smoothly and looked such cool hostility. So she tapped at the kitchen door and a large cook of sound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in and passed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted this adventurous way of entering. She was rather unobservant about some things, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in by the kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some of the Addington traditions ingrain.