"I don't believe in moral suasion entirely, Eleanor," Gertrude tried to follow Eleanor's leads, until she had in some way satisfied the child's need for enlightenment on the subject under discussion. It was not always simple to discover just what Eleanor wanted to know, but Gertrude had come to believe that there was always some excellent reason for her wanting to know it. "I think there are some quarrels that have to be settled by physical violence." Eleanor nodded. Then, "What about refinement?" she asked unexpectedly. "I want to bring myself up good when--when all of my aunts and uncles are too busy, or don't know. I want to grow up, and be ladylike and a credit, and I'm getting such good culture that I think I ought to, but--I get worried about my refinement. City refinement is different from country refinement." "Refinement isn't a thing that you can worry about," Gertrude began slowly. She realized perhaps better than any of the others, being a better balanced, healthier creature than either Beulah or Margaret, that there were serious defects in the scheme of cooperative parentage. Eleanor, thanks to the overconscientious digging about her roots, was acquiring a New England self-consciousness about her processes. A child, Gertrude felt, should be handed a code ready made and should be guided by it without question until his maturer experience led him to modify it. The trouble with trying to explain this to Eleanor was that she had already had too many things explained to her, and the doctrine of unselfconsciousness can not be inculcated by an exploitation of it. "If you are naturally a fine person your instinct will be to do the fine thing. You must follow it when you feel the instinct and not think about it between times." "That's Uncle Peter's idea," Eleanor said, "that not thinking. Well, I'll try--but you and Uncle Peter didn't have six different parents and a Grandpa and Grandma and Albertina all criticizing your refinement in different ways. Don't you ever have any trouble with your behavior, Aunt Gertrude?"