"No, don't you touch me, I didn't mean a thing by it! I just couldn't help it! It's too, _too_ rich! Oh Penny, you duck! Oh, I shall die! I shall die! I never saw anything so funny in my life! Oh, Penny, take me away or I shall perish here and now!" On the whole, in spite of the repulsing hand, he took it that he had advanced his cause. He broke into a laugh, more light-hearted than he had uttered for a long time. They stood for a moment more in the soft darkness, gazing in with rapt eyes at the family scene. Then they reeled away up the street, gasping and choking with mirth, festooning themselves about trees for support when their legs gave way under them. "_Did_ you see George's face when Emelene let the cat eat out of her plate!" cried Betty. "And did you see Genevieve's when Mrs. Brewster-Smith had the dessert set down in front of her to serve!" "How about little Eleanor upsetting the glass of milk on George's trousers!" "Oh _poor_ old George! Did you ever see such gloom!" Thus bubbling, they came again to Betty's home with the door still open from which she had lately emerged. There Betty fell suddenly silent, all the laughter gone from her face. The man peered in the dusk, apprehensive. What had gone wrong, now, after all? "Do you know, Penny, we're pigs!" she said suddenly, with energy. "We're hateful, abominable pigs!" He glared at her and clutched his hair. "Didn't you see Emelene Brand's face? I can't get it out of my mind! It makes me sick, it was so happy and peaceful and befooled! Poor old dear! She _believes_ all that! And she's the only one who does! And its beastly in us to make a joke of it! She has wanted a home all her life, and she'd have made a lovely one, too, for children! And she's been kept from it by all this fool's talk about womanliness." "Help! What under the sun are you..." began Penfield. "Why, look here, she's not and never was, the kind any man wants to marry. She wouldn't have liked a real husband, either... poor, dear, thin-blooded old child! But she wanted a _home_ just the same. Everybody does! And if she had been taught how to earn a decent living, if she hadn't been fooled out of her five senses by that idiotic cant about a man's doing everything for you, or else going without... why she'd be working now, a happy, useful woman, bringing up two or three adopted children in a decent home she'd made for them with her own efforts... instead of making her loving heart ridiculous over a cat...." She dashed her hand over her eyes angrily, and stood silent for a moment, trying to control her quivering chin before she went into the house. The young man touched her shoulder with reverent fingers. "Betty," he said in a rather unsteady voice, "its _true_, all that bally-rot about women being better than men. You _are_!" With which very modern compliment, he turned and left her. CHAPTER V. BY KATHLEEN NORRIS