"You oughtn't to laugh, Sam," she told him, in a tone of dignified reproof. "You may not think it very important--all this about the children; but it is. It is the most important thing in the world. Even Marian Stanford says----" "Why do you discuss the subject with her?" interrupted Sam. "You'll never agree; and whatever we do with our own children, we mustn't force our views on other people." She surveyed him with a mutinous expression about her pretty lips. "Marian doesn't hesitate to criticise my methods," she said. "The last time I saw her she informed me that she had whipped her baby--only think, Sam, her _baby_!" "Did she use the butter-paddle on the unfortunate infant?" he wanted to know, with a quizzical lift of his eyebrows; "or was it a spanking _au naturel_?" Elizabeth repressed his levity with a frown. "I wonder at you, Sam, for thinking there's anything funny about it," she said rebukingly. "I didn't feel at all like laughing when she said--with such a superior air--'Livingstone's been getting altogether too much for me lately, and this morning I took the paddle to him and whipped him soundly. He was the most surprised child you ever saw!' Of course I didn't _say_ anything. What could I have said? But I must have looked what I felt, for she burst out laughing. 'Dear, dear!' she said, 'how indignant you do look; but I intend to have _my_ children mind me.' Then she glanced at Richard peacefully pulling the spools out of my basket as if she pitied him for having such a fond, weak mother as to allow it." Sam Brewster rumpled his hair with a smothered yawn. "Marian is certainly a strenuous lady," he murmured. "But let me advise you, Betty, not to discuss family discipline with her, if you wish to preserve peaceful relations between the families. The illegitimate use of the Stanford butter-paddle is nothing to us, you know.--Er--you were telling me about the letter you had from the fair Evelyn," he went on pacifically, "and did my ears deceive me? or did you intimate that our dear friend Miss Tripp was coming to spend the day with us soon?" "To spend the day!" echoed Elizabeth. "She's coming to stay two weeks. I had to ask her, Sam," she added, quickly forestalling his dismayed protest; "she is obliged to be in town interviewing lawyers and people, and I did want to do something to help her. Sam, she thinks she may be obliged to teach, or do something; but she isn't up on anything, and I don't believe she could possibly get any sort of a position." "Betty, you're a good little woman," he said, beaming humorously upon her; "and I never felt more convinced of the fact than I do this minute. I'm game, though; I'll do everything I can to help in my small, weak way." Elizabeth gazed at her husband with wide, meditative eyes. "I do wish," she said devoutly, "that Evelyn could meet some nice, suitable man. She's really very attractive--you know she is, Sam--and it would solve all her problems so beautifully."