"Maybe I am, maybe I am," he retorted fiercely. "But you'll find there's no smoke without some fire, my fine lady, and when a boy that's always been a lazy, idle shame to his father and mother gets a taste of blame, you can depend that no newspaper is going to make a saint of him!" "Grandma, don't let him talk that way!" Julia protested, her breast rising and falling. Chester turned to his father. "Maybe if you'd a-give me a better chance," he said sullenly, "maybe if us boys hadn't been kicked around so much, shoved into the first job that came handy, seeing Ma and the girls afraid to breathe while you was in the house--" Both men were now standing, their faces close together. "Well, you ain't going to have another chance here!" the old man shouted. "I'll have no jailbirds settin' around here to be petted and babied! Get that into your head! Don't you let me come into the house and find you here again----" "Pa!" protested Mrs. Cox, fired by the eyes of her granddaughters. "Yes--an' 'Pa'!" he snarled, pulling on his old hat, and opening the kitchen door. "But it'll be Pa on the wrong side of your face if you make any mistake about it! Jailbird!" he muttered to himself, with a final slam at the door. The others looked at each other. "That's a sweet welcome home," said Chester, with a bitter laugh. He was standing, his head lowered; there was bewilderment as well as anger in his look. "Pa's got to be a terrible crank," said Mrs. Cox, returning to her teapot, after a glance through the window at her retiring lord. "He carries on something terrible sometimes." "Well, he won't carry on any longer as far as I am concerned!" Chester said, a little vaguely. "I don't know what's got into Pa!" his wife complained. "Don't you care, Uncle Chess," Marguerite submitted with timid sympathy. "Oh, no, sure I don't care," the man said with a short laugh. "Of course it's nothing to me! A man comes home to his own folks, he's had a tough time--" His voice sank huskily. The sleeves of his coat were too short for him, and Julia noticed how thin his wrists were, as he gathered up his newspaper clippings and restored them to his inside pocket. The women watched him in silence. Presently he stooped down and kissed his mother's forehead, at the edge of her untidy, grizzled hair. "Good-bye, Ma!" he said. "Good-bye, girls!" "It'll be a judgment on your father," Mrs. Cox protested. "I don't know what's gotten into him!" But she made no further objection; she did not get up from her place at table when Chester crossed the kitchen, opened the street door, and went out. "Grandpa's a prince, all right!" said Marguerite then, and Evelyn added, "Wouldn't it give you a pain?" "But I notice that none of us did anything about it!" Julia said bitterly. "If your grandpa found Chess here when he got home to-night, there'd be a reckoning!" the old woman asserted dully. "And what is Uncle Chess supposed to do?" Julia demanded.