if it had come
out, the Public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr.
Eathorne; he was welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture;
and they both profited in their pleasant new association.

After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except on spring Sunday
mornings which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Ted,
"I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than
the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll
help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own
church-home!"

CHAPTER XVIII

I

THOUGH he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every
detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more
conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeves.

The admiration of Kenneth Escott made him aware of Verona.

She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather
Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres
details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the
people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing
something desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doing
it. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant ardors that he became
the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into
the living-room and gurgled, "Has our Kenny been here to-night?" He
never credited Verona's protest, "Why, Ken and I are just good friends,
and we only talk about Ideas. I won't have all this sentimental
nonsense, that would spoil everything."

It was Ted who most worried Babbitt.

With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in
manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted was
struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home
he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the
ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that
he did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Babbitt was equally
disturbed by this "shiftlessness" and by Ted's relations with Eunice
Littlefield, next door.

Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-iron
fact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice was
a midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself into
Babbitt's lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laugh