"Whew!" breathed a young chap in white flannels. The youth, in large horn-rimmed spectacles, went solemnly over to Sard and held out his hand, "I'm with you. It will make a sensation, anyway; maybe we couldn't get much out of Shipman but I'm with you, only what will Papa say?" Sard had been thinking about that; a curious look in her eyes, she faced the boy. "Father's law is one thing," the girl said it without a trace of disrespect or rebellion, "but mine is another and I want to be true to mine! I don't know how you feel," she looked soberly at the owlish one, "but I can't be happy and know that there is so much tragedy in the world. I can't live under that law." It was the old sad cry of youth, "Must my happiness, then, be bought at the expense of so much human frustration and misery?" But the owlish-eyed one repudiated this notion. "You'll have to," he said oracularly--"somebody's always hurting somebody--someone is always getting happiness out of someone's else misery." The horn-rimmed eyes looked very mature and bitter. But several of the group jumped down from the terrace and were now tinkering with the machines in the drive. Jeering cries came from one to another as the engines started up. "Minga goes with me!" "Aw! go on, you animal, she does not; she goes with me; right here, Minga, where there's a looking-glass and rouge and sachet powder and everything--Sard goes with Thorny Croft. Hey, Nonny, Nonny, the two nuts, the two high-brows! Cinny'll catch cold; she hasn't got enough clothes on; Cinny never has enough clothes on. How about the dance the other night? Well--well--well, we saw a good deal of Cinny!" Not delicate, not pretty, not dignified, not inspiring. But it belongs to the age, Messieur et Mesdames; what part have you had in making the age what it is? CHAPTER X THE EXPEDITION DEAR WATTS: Pudge wants me to write and thank you for your letter. He was fascinated with the arrow-heads and listened with his accustomed solemnity to your remarks about "minding mother." An hour afterward I found him putting cold cream, which I have expressly forbidden him to touch, all over the kitten. Upon remonstrance he said blandly, "You didn't tell me not to put cold cream on the kitten, Mother, and she didn't say anything." It was all so funny and he was so naughty afterward! It opened up strange thoughts of all the responsibilities I shall have with him. I wondered if when Pudge grows up the first thing he will hear will be all the sad and ugly stories that are told of his father and if he will believe that they cast an irrevocable shadow on his own life. I have known young fellows who went steadily to the bad because their fathers were weak in some way. They thought they were foredoomed!