y.

"I won't in that building or the school session," he said. "Outside I'll
knife him if I can."

"Jeff," said Miss Amabel, "if you'd only work together."

"We can't," said Jeff, "any more than oil and water. Or alkali and acid.
We'd make a mighty fizz. I'm in it for all I'm worth, Amabel. To bust
Weedie and save Addington."

"Weedon Moore is saving Addington," said she.

"Do you honestly believe that? Think how Addington began. Do you suppose
a town that old boy up there helped to build--" he glanced at his
friend, the judge--"do you think that little rat can do much for it? I
don't."

"Perhaps Addington doesn't need his kind of help now, or yours.
Addington is perfectly comfortable, except its working class. And it's
the working man Weedon Moore is striving for."

"Addington is comfortable on a red-hot crater," said Jeff. "She's like
all the rest of America. She's sat here sentimentalising and letting the
crater get hotter and hotter under her, and unless we look out, Amabel,
there isn't going to be any America, one of these days. Mrs. Choate says
it's going to be the spoil of damned German efficiency. She thinks the
Huns are waking up and civilisations going under. But I don't. I believe
we're going to be a great unwieldy, industrial monster, no cohesion in
us and no patriotism, no citizenship."

"No patriotism!" Miss Amabel rose involuntarily and stood there
trembling. Her troubled eyes sought the pictured eyes of the old Judge.
"Jeff, you don't know what you're saying."

"I do," said Jeff, "mighty well. Sit down, dear, or I shall have to
salute the flag, too, and I'm too lazy."

She sat down, but she was trembling.

"And I'm going to save Addington, if I can," said Jeff. "I haven't the
tongue of men and angels or I'd go out and try to salvage the whole
business. But I can't. Addington's more my size. If there were invasion,
you know, a crippled man couldn't do more than try to defend his own
dooryard. Dear old girl, we've got to save Addington."

"I'm trying," said she. "Jeff, dear, I'm trying. And I've a lot of
money. I don't know how it rolled up so."

"Don't give it to Weedon Moore, that's all," he ventured, and then, in
the stiffening of her whole body, he saw it was a mistake even to
mention Moore. Her large charity made her fiercely partisan. He ventured
the audacious personal appeal. "Give me some, Amabel, if you've really
got so much. Let me put on some plays, in a simple way, and try to ma