o friends who are
unhappy through no fault of theirs" (Sylvia winced at this, and
thought of confessing that she was very near running away and leaving
Camilla to her fate), "and I hope you'll go on being as nice to your
unfortunate friends as ever--"

Judith said: "They aren't friends of mine! I don't like them!"

As not infrequently happened, something about Judith's attitude had
been irritating her father, and he now said with some severity, "Then
it's a case where Sylvia's loving heart can do more good than your
anger, though you evidently think it very fine of you to feel that!"

Judith looked down in a stubborn silence, and Sylvia drooped miserably
in the consciousness of receiving undeserved praise. She opened her
mouth to explain her vacillations of the morning, but her moral fiber
was not equal to the effort. She felt very unhappy to have Judith
blamed and herself praised when things ought to have been reversed,
but she could not bring herself to renounce her father's good opinion.

Professor Marshall gave them both a kiss and set them down. "It's
twenty minutes to one. You'd better run along, dears," he said.

After the children had gone out, his wife, who had preserved an
unbroken silence, remarked dryly, "So that's the stone we give them
when they ask for bread."

Professor Marshall made no attempt to defend himself. "My dim
generalities are pretty poor provender for honest children's minds, I
admit," he said humbly, "but what else have we to give them that isn't
directly contradicted by our lives? There's no use telling children
something that they never see put into practice."

"It's not impossible, I suppose, to change our lives," suggested his
wife uncompromisingly.

Professor Marshall drew a great breath of disheartenment. "As long as
I can live without thinking of that element in American life--it's all
right. But when anything brings it home--like this today--I feel that
the mean compromise we all make must be a disintegrating moral force
in the national character. I feel like gathering up all of you, and
going away--away from the intolerable question--to Europe--and earning
the family living by giving English lessons!"

Mrs. Marshall cried out, "It makes _me_ feel like going out right here
in La Chance with a bomb in one hand and a rifle in the other!"

From which difference of impression it may perhaps be seen that the
two disputants were respectively the father and mother of Sylvia and