rhaps rather hoping--that he
would take this opportunity to escape. With Phil I was never then
entirely at ease; but in those days I was wholly so with Maltby. Miss
Goucher answered my summons in person, and I suggested a sauterne cup
for my friends. Phil frowned on the suggestion, but Maltby beamed. The
ayes had it, and Miss Goucher, who had remained neutral, withdrew. It
was Phil's chance; yet he surprised me by settling back and refilling
his pipe.

"When you came, Mr. Phar," he said, his tone withdrawing toward
formality, "we were discussing the education of Susan."

"Then I came just in time!" cried Maltby.

"For what?" I queried.

"I may prevent a catastrophe. If you're really going to see this thing
through, Boz"--his name for me--"for God's sake do a little clear
thinking first! Don't drift. Don't flounder. Don't wallow. Scrap all
your musty, inbred prejudices once for all, and see that at least one
kid on this filthy old planet gets a plain, honest, unsentimentalized
account of what she is and what the world is. If you can bring yourself
to do that, Susan will be unique. She will be the first educated woman
in America."

"'What she is and what the world is,'" repeated Phil, slowly. "What is
the world, may I ask? And what is Susan?"

There was a felt tenseness in the moment; the hush before battle. We
leaned forward a little from our easy-chairs, and no one of us noticed
that Susan had slipped noiselessly to the window seat by the opened
library window which gave upon the terrace. But there, as we later
discovered, she was; and there, for the present silently, she remained.

"The world," began Maltby Phar sententiously, "is a pigsty."

"Very well," interrupted Phil; "I'll grant you that to start with. What
follows?"

"What we see about us," said Maltby.

"And what do we see?" asked Phil.

At this inopportune moment Miss Goucher reappeared, bearing a Sheffield
tray, on which stood three antique Venetian goblets, and a tall pitcher
of rare Bohemian glass, filled to the brim with an iced sauterne cup
garnished with fresh strawberries and thin disks of pineapple. Nothing
less suggestive of the conventional back-lot piggery could have been
imagined. By the time a table had been placed, our goblets filled, and
Miss Goucher had retired, Maltby had decided to try for a new opening.

"Excellent!" he resumed, having drained and refilled his goblet. "Now,
Mr. Farmer, if you really wish to know what the world