"Why doesn't she take him, and stop all her nonsense? I hear she told those poor, silly strikers in Dean's rubber-factory to support Smith, the 'Woman's Candidate'! Much 'supporting' they can do! And the joke of it is, Smith himself owns the controlling stock. She had better be at home, darning her stockings." "Oh, now, Father, you must remember it isn't as if Ellen didn't have plenty of servants to do things like that." "I hear she's signed that petition to have certain kinds of diseases registered. _I_ don't know what the world's coming to, that girls know about such things!" "Well, of course, girls are more intelligent than they used to be." "If she's so intelligent, I'll give her a book on Bacon-Shakespeare that will exercise her brains,--and she can stop concerning herself with matters that decent women know nothing about. Thank Heaven, our Laura is as ignorant as a baby! Or, if Fred is so bent on reforming things, let her have a Sunday-school class," said Mr. Childs, puffing and scowling. "Look here, Mother, if you have any influence over her, try and get her to take young Maitland. I should sleep more easily in my bed if I thought she had a man to keep her in order." "But he has gone away," Mrs. Childs objected. "That's because she has turned him down. Maybe he'll never think of her again; I wouldn't, if I were a young fellow! I'd want a _woman_, not a man in petticoats. But if he does get on her track again, tell her to take him; tell her I say she'll get a crooked stick if she waits too long. You're sure Laura isn't blue about him?" "Now, Father! You are the most foolish man about that child!..." "Why has Maitland gone on that expedition, Fred?" said Mr. Weston. "You can search me," said Miss Payton. Arthur Weston's hands, concealed in his pockets, tightened. "She has refused him!" he said to himself. (Alas! shooting ducks on the marshes had not helped him!) He had dropped in at 15 Payton Street, and Fred had taken him up to the flounced and flowery sitting-room. "Mother'll be in pretty soon," she said; "so let's talk business, quick!" She was apparently absorbed in "business," which, as the winter thawed and drizzled into spring, flagged very much. "And the office rent goes right along, just the same," she told her trustee, ruefully. "I think, if I could have a little car to run around and look at places--" "Maitland put that idea in your head!" Frederica did not defend her absent adorer. Instead, she wailed over the rapacity of her landlord. "You ought to have made your rent contingent on your customers," Mr. Weston teased her; and roared when she took it seriously and said she wished she had thought of it. "Give me some tea, Fred," he said; "these questions of high finance exhaust me." Then he asked the usual question, and Fred gave the usual answer. "But what do you hear from him?" Weston persisted. "I suppose you write to him occasionally? You mustn't be too cruel."