gentle fellow was always excited by life, so
faintly excited by him, and enjoyed its presentation in any real form.

Ninian had unerringly selected a dwarf rocker, and he was overflowing it
and rocking.

"Take this chair, do!" Ina begged. "A big chair for a big man." She
spoke as if he were about the age of Monona.

Ninian refused, insisted on his refusal. A few years more, and human
relationships would have spread sanity even to Ina's estate and she
would have told him why he should exchange chairs. As it was she
forbore, and kept glancing anxiously at the over-burdened little beast
beneath him.

The child Monona entered the room. She had been driven down by Di and
Jenny Plow, who had vanished upstairs and, through the ventilator, might
be heard in a lift and fall of giggling. Monona had also been driven
from the kitchen where Lulu was, for some reason, hurrying through the
dishes. Monona now ran to Mrs. Bett, stood beside her and stared about
resentfully. Mrs. Bett was in best black and ruches, and she seized upon
Monona and patted her, as her own form of social expression; and Monona
wriggled like a puppy, as hers.

"Quiet, pettie," said Ina, eyebrows up. She caught her lower lip in her
teeth.

"Well, sir," said Dwight, "you wouldn't think it to look at us, but
mother had her hands pretty full, bringing us up."

Into Dwight's face came another look. It was always so, when he spoke of
this foster-mother who had taken these two boys and seen them through
the graded schools. This woman Dwight adored, and when he spoke of her
he became his inner self.

"We must run up-state and see her while you're here, Nin," he said.

To this Ninian gave a casual assent, lacking his brother's really tender
ardour.

"Little," Dwight pursued, "little did she think I'd settle down into a
nice, quiet, married dentist and magistrate in my town. And Nin
into--say, Nin, what are you, anyway?"

They laughed.

"That's the question," said Ninian.

They laughed.

"Maybe," Ina ventured, "maybe Ninian will tell us something about his
travels. He is quite a traveller, you know," she said to the Plows. "A
regular Gulliver."

They laughed respectfully.

"How we should love it, Mr. Deacon," Mrs. Plow said. "You know we've
never seen _very_ much."

Goaded on, Ninian launched upon his foreign countries as he had seen
them: Population, exports, imports, soil, irrigation, business. For the
populations Ninian had no respect. Crops co