"Oh, my dear," Fred's mother condoled, "I'm an anti, and she says shocking things to me; once she said the antis were--I really can't say just what she said before Mr. Weston; but she implied they were--merely mothers. And as for her language! I was saying how perfectly shocked my dear old friend, Miss Maria Spencer, was over this Inn escapade; Miss Maria said that if it were known that Freddy had spent the night at the Inn with Mr. Maitland her reputation would be gone." Mr. Weston's lips drew up for a whistle, but he frowned. "I told Freddy, and what do you suppose she said? Really, I hesitate to repeat it." "But dear Ellen," Mrs. Childs broke in, "it was horrid in Miss Spencer to say such a thing! I don't wonder Freddy was provoked." "She brought it on herself," Mrs. Payton retorted. "Have another sandwich, Bessie? What she said is almost too shocking to quote. She said of my dear old friend--Miss Spencer used to be my school-teacher, Mr. Weston--'What difference does it make what she said about me? Everybody knows Miss Spencer is a silly old ass.' 'A silly old ass.' What do you think of _that_?" Mrs. Payton's voice trembled so with indignation that she did not hear Mr. Weston's gasp of laughter. But as she paused, wounded and ashamed, he was quick to console her: "It was abominably disrespectful!" "There is no such thing as reverence left in the world," said Mrs. Childs; "my William says he doesn't know what we are coming to." "Youth is very cruel," Mr. Weston said. Mrs. Payton's eyes filled. "Freddy is cruel," she said, simply. The wounded look in her worn face was pitiful. They both tried to comfort her; they denounced Freddy, and wondered at her, and agreed with Mr. Childs that "nobody knew what we were coming to." In fact, they said every possible thing except the one thing which, with entire accuracy, they might have said, namely, that Miss Spencer was a silly old ass. "When I was a young lady," Mrs. Payton said, "respect for my elders would have made such words impossible." "Even if you didn't respect them, you would have been respectful?" Mr. Weston suggested. "We reverenced age because it was age," she agreed. "Yes; in those happy days respect was not dependent upon desert," he said, ruefully. (Mrs. Childs looked at him uneasily; just what did he mean by that?) "It must have been very comfortable," he ruminated, "to be respected when you didn't deserve to be! This new state of things I don't like at all; I find that they size me up as I am, these youngsters, not as what they ought to think I am. One of my nephews told me the other day that I didn't know what I was talking about." "Oh, my dear Mr. Weston, how shocking!" Mrs. Payton sympathized. "Well, as it happened, I didn't," he said, mildly; "but how outrageous for the cub to recognize the fact."