tions. Perhaps, too,
some of the vague softness of June had risen in him and made him gentler
in his judgments of youth.

"I didn't expect you or I'd have straightened up a bit," said Oliver,
not overgraciously, while he hastily pushed his supper of bread and tea
to one end of the table. He resented what he called in his mind "the
intrusion," and he had no particular objection to his uncle's observing
his resentment. His temper, never of the most perfect equilibrium, had
been entirely upset by the effects of a June Sunday in Dinwiddie, and
the affront of Cyrus's visit had become an indignity because of his
unfortunate selection of the supper hour. Some hidden obliquity in the
Treadwell soul, which kept it always at cross-purposes with life,
prevented any lessening of the deep antagonism between the old and the
young of the race. And so incurable was this obliquity in the soul of
Cyrus, that it forced him now to take a tone which he had resolutely set
his mind against from the moment of Mrs. Peachey's visit. He wanted to
be pleasant, but something deep down within him--some inherited tendency
to bully--was stronger than his will.

"I looked in to see if you hadn't about come to your senses," he began.

"If you mean come to your way of looking at things--then I haven't,"
replied Oliver, and added in a more courteous tone, "Won't you sit
down?"

"No, sir, I can stand long enough to say what I came to say," retorted
the other, and it seemed to him that the pleasanter he tried to make his
voice, the harsher grew the sound of it in his ears. What was it about
the rascal that rubbed him the wrong way only to look at him?

"As you please," replied Oliver quietly. "What in thunder has he got to
say to me?" he thought. "And why can't he say it and have it over?"
While Cyrus merely despised him, he detested Cyrus with all the fiery
intolerance of his age. "Standing there like an old turkey gobbler,
ugh!" he said contemptuously to himself.

"So you ain't hungry yet?" asked the old man, and felt that the words
were forced out of him by that obstinate cross-grain in his nature over
which he had no control.

"I've just had tea."

"You haven't changed your mind since you last spoke to me, eh?"

"No, I haven't changed my mind. Why should I?"

"Getting along pretty well, then?"

"As well as I expected to."

"That's good," said Cyrus mildly. "That's good. I just dropped in to
make sure that you were getting along, that's al