Mr. Floyd-Rosney took his wife by the elbow. “Come on,” he said, “why are you lagging back here,--afraid to get in the yawl?” Then he added in a lower voice, “Can you do nothing to stop that miserable girl’s chatter?” But the voice, even hissing between his set teeth, was not so low that Marjorie, being near, did not hear it. At all events, _she_ had had no schooling in self-repression, in the humiliation of a politic deference. She flamed out with all the normal instincts of self-asserting and wounded pride. “No, there isn’t any way to stop my chatter,”--she exclaimed hotly, “for I have as good a right to talk as you. I am _not_ a ‘miserable girl.’ But I don’t care what _you_ say. I don’t train with your gang, anyhow!” “Why, Marjorie,” cried Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and her husband had a moment’s relief in the expectation that the indignity offered to him would be summarily, yet tactfully rebuked. But his wife only said, “What slang! Is that the kind of thing you learn at Madame Gerault’s?” She passed her arm about the girl’s shoulder, but Marjorie had as yet learned no self-control at Madame Gerault’s or elsewhere, and burst into stormy tears. Even after she was seated in the yawl, beside Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, she wept persistently, and sobbed aloud. The grief-stricken spectacle greatly affected little Ned Floyd-Rosney at the further end of the yawl. After staring, in grave and flushed dismay and amaze for a few moments, he made one or two spasmodic efforts to cheer his boon companion from the distance. Then he succumbed to sympathy and wept dolorously and loudly in concert. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney made no effort to reach him by word or look. Her husband, whose nerves a crying child affected with such intense aggravation that he was seldom subjected to this annoyance, was compelled to set his teeth in helpless discomfort, and endure the affliction, intensified by the difference in age, and the variance in pitch and vocal volume of the two lachrymose performers.