"She does show considerable cerebral quietude," Weston admitted, chuckling. "Did you ever make a call in the Payton house, and see old Andy Payton's silk hat on the hat-rack?" "I have. But I'm not afraid of it;--there are no brains in it now." "Well, I told Laura I thought she was the finest woman I knew," Maitland said, earnestly. "Who? Lolly?" "Heavens, no! Fred. She's no Victorian miss, I tell you what!" "The Victorians would send her to bed on bread and water." "I heard her make a speech to those striking garment-women," Fred's defender said; "she told 'em to get the vote, and their wages would go up. It was fine." "Whether it was true is immaterial?" Howard did not go into that. "And then, about morals; she talks to you just like another man. There's none of this business of pretending she doesn't know things. She knows as much about life as you or I." "Oh, I don't pretend to know as much as you," Arthur Weston deprecated, lifting a humorously modest eyebrow. "She talks well, too, doesn't she?" Howard rambled on; "I don't know what she's talking about sometimes, she's so confoundedly cultivated. The other day I said something about that nasty uplift play that they tried to pull off at the Penn Street Theater; and then I jerked myself up, and sort of apologized. And Freddy said, 'Go ahead; what's eating you?' And I said, 'Oh, well, I didn't know whether I ought to speak of that sort of thing.' And she said, 'Only the truth shall make us free.' That's out of the Bible, I believe." Mr. Weston nodded. "I know the book. I've even read it, which is probably more than either you or Fred have done. I don't think it says the truth shall make you free--and easy; does it?" Howard laughed, and got on his feet. "I'm going to beat up business for her. I took her round in my car to look up apartments for those relations of yours. Why doesn't Mrs. Payton have a car? Haven't they money enough?" "Oh, yes. But that poor creature, the brother, has to go out in a carriage. An auto would excite him, I suppose." "I see. I told Fred she ought to have a little motor of her own, just as a matter of business." "Hold on!" Frederica's trustee remonstrated, in alarm. "Take her in your car, if you want to, but please don't suggest one for her. She'd have to put a mortgage on her office furniture to pay for a week's gasoline! Look here, Howard--don't stand there like the Colossus of Rhodes, looking down at me as if I only weighed as much as one of your legs--tell me this: don't you see that this business of Fred's earning her living is perfectly artificial? She has a little income, and she can live on it; and when her mother dies, she'll have all the Payton money. So it is entirely unnecessary for her to go to work, to say nothing of the fact that she won't earn enough to buy her shoe-strings."