lt and conversed with Aunt Hatty in a high brisk
voice: "This is the nice boy I met on the road that I think I told you
about, Cousin Hatty."

The little old lady screwed up the delicate skin about her eyes,
examined Milt, and cackled, "Boy, there's something wrong here. You
don't belong with my family. Why, you look like an American. You
haven't got an imitation monocle, and I bet you can't talk with a New
York-London accent. Why, Claire, I'm ashamed of you for bringing a human
being into the Boltwood-Gilson-Saxton tomb and expecting----"

Then was the smile of Mrs. Gilson lost forever. It was simultaneously
torpedoed, mined, scuttled, and bombed. It went to the bottom without a
ripple, while Mrs. Gilson snapped, "Aunt Hatty, please don't be vulgar."

"Me?" croaked the little old lady. She puffed at her pipe, and dropped
her elbows on her knees. "My, ain't it hard to please some folks."

"Cousin Hatty, I want Milt to know about our families. I love the dear
old stories," Claire begged prettily.

Mrs. Gilson snarled. "Claire, really----"

"Oh, do shut up, Eva, and don't be so bossy!" yelped the dear little old
lady, in sudden and dismaying rage. "I'll talk if I want to. Have they
been bullying you, Claire? Or your boy? I tell you, boy, these families
are fierce. I was brought up in Brooklyn--went through all the
schools--used to be able to misplay the piano and mispronounce French
with the best of 'em. Then Gene's pa and I came West together--he had an
idea he'd get rich robbing the Injuns of their land. And we went broke.
I took in washing. I learned a lot. I learned a Gilson was just the
same common stuff as a red-shirt miner, when he was up against it. But
Gene's pa succeeded--there was something about practically stealing a
fur schooner--but I never was one to tattle on my kin. Anyway, by the
time Gene come along, his pa was rich, and that means aristocratic.

"This aristocracy west of Pittsburgh is just twice as bad as the
snobbery in Boston or New York, because back there, the families have
had their wealth long enough--some of 'em got it by stealing real estate
in 1820, and some by selling Jamaica rum and niggers way back before the
Revolutionary War--they've been respectable so long that they know
mighty well and good that nobody except a Britisher is going to question
their blue blood--and oh my, what good blueing third-generation money
does make. But out here in God's Country, the marquises of milling an