n is better than this, and she does
give you cream, instead of this milk of magnesia or soapy water or
whatever the beastly stuff is. And to have to drink it out of these
horrid thick cups--like toothbrush mugs. I'm sure I'll find a chewed-up
old toothbrush when I get to the bottom."

"Don't be vulgar, Marky. You might remember this is Massachusetts, not
New York."

"Well, this Massachusetts lettuce--I'm perfectly convinced that they
used it for floor-rags before they went and lost it in the
sandwiches--and this thick crumby bread--oh, it's unspeakable. I do wish
you wouldn't poke around in these horrid places, mama, or else leave me
in the car when you are moved to go slumming. I'm sure I don't feel any
call to uplift the poor."

"My dear child, I seem to remember your admiring Freddy Dabney because
he is so heroically poor. It's very good for you to come to a place like
this. Now you know what it's like to be poor, Marky. You can see
precisely how romantic it really is."

"Oh, I'll admit Marky is a perfect little devil. But I do want you to
observe that she's been brave enough to eat part of her sandwich. Let's
go. Where is the nice smiling little man? Let's pay our bill and go."

Twenty feet from the bored Carters was tragedy. Gray-faced, dumb, Father
stood by Mother's chair, stroking her dull hair as she laid her head on
the crude kitchen table and sobbed. Mechanically, back and forth, back
and forth, his hand passed over her dear, comfortable head, while he
listened, even as, on the stairs to the guillotine, a gallant gentleman
of old France might have caressed his marquise.

"Mother--" he began. It was hard to say anything when there was nothing
to say. "It's all right. They're just silly snobs. They--"

Yes, the Applebys could not understand every detail of what the
well-bred Carters had said. "Interior decoration"--that didn't mean
anything to them. All that they understood was that they were fools and
failures, in the beginning of their old age; that they belonged to the
quite ludicrously inefficient.

Father realized, presently, that the Carters were waiting for their
bill. For a minute more he stroked Mother's hair. If the Carters would
only go from this place they had desecrated, and take their damned money
with them! But he had been trained by years of dealing with
self-satisfied people in a shoe-store at least to make an effort to
conceal his feelings. He dragged himself into the tea-room, kept hi