She walked down the stairs, puzzling over the strange lack of system that she saw everywhere about her. There was Jack, lying at his ease in his room, with a superb disregard of responsibilities. She caught a glimpse of Gassy sitting in the dusty, disorderly library, reading the story from which she had been forcibly separated the evening before at bedtime. And finally, as she reëntered the dining-room, she stumbled over the Kid, who was arranging plates, taken from the uncleared dining-table, in a neat line on the carpet. “Don’t upset my ships!” he roared, as Barbara unconsciously crunched a butter-plate under her erring tread. She stared in horror at the débris; then, sweeping the plates up, to the accompaniment of shrieks from the youngest Grafton, she sat down on a chair and took her struggling little brother on her lap. “Charles Grafton, listen to me!” she said firmly but not angrily, remembering the pedagogic articles on “Anger and the Child,” and the extracts which had filled a large college note-book. “Charles! What do you mean by doing such a dreadful thing as this? Answer, immediately.” It was while she was trying to understand his stormy articulations that Mrs. Grafton appeared, and sank down wearily in a chair near the door. The Kid immediately wriggled from his sister and ran to his mother, weeping. “Just see what this boy has done!” cried Barbara. “I picked up half these plates from the floor. I never saw such a child! This table ought to have been cleared long ago, anyway.” “Ellen can’t clear the table until breakfast is over,” said Mrs. Grafton, soothing the little boy in her arms. “Your father, Cecilia, Charles, and I had our breakfast as usual at quarter after seven. I imagine that Ellen was waiting for you to finish. Moreover, the gas-man came to look at the meter in the cellar, and she and I both went down with him. I just came up from there.” Mrs. Grafton’s face settled into weary lines, and she sighed heavily. But Barbara did not notice. She was looking at the new egg-stain on the Wilton rug. “Mother,” she said, in her fresh, energetic voice, “I really do think things might be managed more systematically here than they actually are. You know that, if there is one thing that we learn at college, it is the need of system. Now see here!” Barbara rose, and began to pace back and forth over the egg-stain. “We rise at six-thirty, an absurdly early hour, though perhaps necessitated by the work of a large family—” “Yes,” interposed her mother, smiling through her pallor. “We _all_ rise at half-past six.” Barbara flushed. “Now, mother!” she said. “I know I haven’t done it these few days since I came home, but that was accidental. It shall not happen again. And Jack is dreadful about getting up!” “Well,” said Mrs. Grafton, “this ‘system’?”