Mrs. Payton shook her fair head. "Your Laura doesn't. I never heard Lolly say the sort of things Freddy does. She calls her father 'Billy-boy,' I know, but that's only fun--though in our day, imagine us calling our fathers by a nickname! No, Bessie, it's Freddy's taste. It's positively low! There is a Mrs. McKenzie, a scrubwoman out at the Inn, and she is--_you_ know? It will be the seventh, and they really can hardly feed the six they have. And Freddy, _a young girl_, actually told Mrs. McKenzie she ought not to have so many children!" "Well, Ellen, if there are too many now, it does seem--" "But, Bessie! A girl to speak of such things! Why, you and I, before we were married, didn't know--still, there's no use harking back to our girlhood. And as for the things she says!... Yesterday I was speaking of the Rev. Mr. Tait, and she said: 'I haven't any use for Tait; he has no guts to him.'" Mrs. Childs was mildly horrified. "But it's only bad taste," she excused her niece. She was fond of this poor, troubled sister-in-law of hers--but really, what was the use of fussing so over mere bad taste? Over really serious things, such as keeping that dreadful Mortimore about, Ellen didn't fuss at all! "How queer she is," Mrs. Childs reflected, impersonal, but kindly; then murmured that if she had been unhappy about her children's slang, she'd have been in her grave by this time; "You should hear my boys! And, after all, Ellen, Fred's a good child, in spite of this thing she's done (you haven't told me what it is yet). She's merely like all the rest of them--thinks she knows it all. Well, we did, too, at her age, only we didn't say so. Sometimes I think they are more straightforward than we were. But I made up my mind, years ago, that there was no use trying to run the children on my ideas. Criticism only provoked them, and made me wretched, and accomplished nothing. So, as William says, why fuss?" "Fred is my daughter, so I have to 'fuss.'" "Well," said Mrs. Childs, patiently, "what is it?" "Hasn't Laura told you? Mama says everybody is talking about it." "No; she hasn't said anything." "My dear, Freddy spent the night at the Inn, with Howard Maitland." "_What!_" "His car broke down--" "Oh, an accident? You can't blame Fred for that. But why didn't they take the trolley?" "They just missed the last car." "Well, they were two careless children, but you wouldn't have had them walk into town, twelve miles, at twelve o'clock at night?" "I certainly would! Freddy is always telling me I ought to walk to keep my weight down--so why didn't she walk home? And as for their being children, she is twenty-five and I am sure he is twenty-seven." She paused here to wonder about Mr. Maitland: curious that he liked to live alone in that big house on the hill! Pity he hadn't any relatives--a maiden aunt, or anybody who could keep house for him. His mother was a sweet little thing. Nice that he had money. "He ought to marry," said Mrs. Childs.