"Of course I don't approve of it any more than you do," Howard said. "If I'd been at home, Laura wouldn't have gone with Fred. Trouble is, she's so sweet-tempered she does whatever anybody wants--and Fred insisted, you know. And when Laura was there she felt she had to stand by Fred--" "Stand by your grandmother!" Payton Childs retorted. "If Fred was my sister, I'd stand by her--with a whip!" "Well, there'll be no more speechifying in _ours_," Howard said, grimly. "But I won't have Laura blamed. What she did, she did out of loyalty to Fred. When it comes to standing by, Laura is as decent as a man!" Miss Spencer was of the opinion that Mrs. Payton had better take the girl to Europe--"under another name, perhaps; then she can't disgrace you. After all, Ellen, I believe she's just like Mortimore--only she doesn't jibber!" "_Miss Spencer!_" "I mean that though she has intellect, she--" "Morty has intellect! Doctor Davis always said the intellect was there, but it was veiled!" "Fred had better veil something," Miss Spencer said, dryly. "Her face, for instance, when she goes to jail." "It wasn't a jail," Mrs. Payton protested, whimperingly. Mrs. Holmes had her opinion, too; all Fred's didos, she said, were due to the fact that Mrs. Payton had not brought her up properly. She said this just as she was leaving the parlor, teetering along on her high-heeled shoes; then her voice suddenly roughened; she turned and glared at her daughter through her white veil. "The amount of it is," she said, "Fred is worth all the rest of us put together! _That's_ why we are so provoked at her. We know we're on the shelf, and useless old fools, every one of us! Especially William Childs." Mrs. Payton was so astounded that she let her mother go out to her carriage unattended. But the words were a comfort to her, for, poor woman, she was struck from every side. As for Fred, she listened listlessly to the jangle of criticism, looking at her critics with curious eyes. How silly they all were! So long as the experience of being arrested had not injured Laura, what difference did it make? With her conception of the values of life, the momentary unpleasantness of newspaper notoriety was not worth thinking of. Fred was very listless now. Something had touched the garment of life, and energy and hope had gone out of it. She ceased to be young.