Suddenly, Elizabeth’s hand dug in compellingly. She might as well have clutched a stone, for Mahlon had very nearly accomplished that transformation. Mahala was off the track! Elizabeth opened her lips to prompt her child with the next word, but shut them in sudden daze. Calm as she conceivably could be, Mahala was going straight ahead; but what was that scandalizing rot she was talking? Elizabeth would have given worlds to have had her daughter across her knee and a hair brush convenient. “Perhaps the highest duty any man owes his neighbour is to respect his mentality, to grant to him the same intellectual freedom that he reserves for himself,” the girl’s clear voice was saying. “Too much contact with Schlotzensmelters and Nelsons!” Elizabeth commented mentally. “Each man has his personal relation to God to consider,” Mahala was saying. “He wishes other men to respect his religion—to that same degree let him consider and reverence the religion of his neighbours.” “Campbellites slopping in a tank! Popery and bigotism!” hissed Elizabeth in her seething brain. “Each man gives his party affiliations deep study and believes wholeheartedly in his views,” the girl was saying. “Why should he deem his neighbour less interested, less capable of deciding for himself?” “Democrats and Populists!” sweated Elizabeth, unsparingly kneading Mahlon’s defenceless side. “There are even those among us not willing to allow our neighbours to choose which newspaper they will take, what books they will read, what clothing they shall wear——” smooth as oil Mahala flowed on, but each phrase was a blow, each idea revolutionary. “Why should men be such bigots as to require that other men shall conform to their ideas before they will grant them intellectual freedom?” cried the girl. “I’ll show you, Miss!” said Elizabeth. But, hark! What was that? The church in a storm of applause, in the midst of a speech! Unprecedented! It kept on and on. Suddenly, Elizabeth found herself blistering her palms against each other. She looked at Mahlon, to find him doing the same thing. Of all the world! How they did applaud that slip of a girl! And those were some of the very things Elizabeth had suppressed, or thought she had.