arm reading and writing, cow-testing exercises, seed analysis, corn clubs
and the tomato, poultry and pig clubs he proposed to have in operation the
next summer, seemed highly practical; but to Jennie's mind, the fact that
they introduced dissension in the neighborhood and promised to make her
official life vexatious, seemed ample proof that Jim's work was visionary
and impractical. Poor Jennie was not aware of the fact that new truth
always comes bringing, not peace to mankind, but a sword.

"Father," said she that night, "let's have a little Christmas party."

"All right," said the colonel. "Whom shall we invite?"

"Don't laugh," said she. "I want to invite Jim Irwin and his mother, and
nobody else."

"All right," reiterated the colonel. "But why?"

"Oh," said Jennie, "I want to see whether I can talk Jim out of some of
his foolishness."

"You want to line him up, do you?" said the colonel. "Well, that's good
politics, and incidentally, you may get some good ideas out of Jim."

"Rather unlikely," said Jennie.

"I don't know about that," said the colonel, smiling. "I begin to think
that Jim's a Brown Mouse. I've told you about the Brown Mouse, haven't
I?"

"Yes," said Jennie. "You've told me. But Professor Darbishire's brown mice
were simply wild and incorrigible creatures. Just because it happens to
emerge suddenly from the forests of heredity, it doesn't prove that the
Brown Mouse is any good."

"Justin Morgan was a Brown Mouse," said the colonel. "And he founded the
greatest breed of horses in the world."

"You say that," said Jennie, "because you're a lover of the Morgan
horse."

"Napoleon Bonaparte was a Brown Mouse," said the colonel. "So was George
Washington, and so was Peter the Great. Whenever a Brown Mouse appears he
changes things in a little way or a big way."

"For the better, always?" asked Jennie.

"No," said the colonel. "The Brown Mouse may throw back to slant-headed
savagery. But Jim ... sometimes I think Jim is the kind of Mendelian
segregation out of which we get Franklins and Edisons and their sort. You
may get some good ideas out of Jim. Let us have them here for Christmas,
by all means."

In due time Jennie's invitation reached Jim and his mother, like an
explosive shell fired from a distance into their humble dwelling--quite
upsetting things. Twenty-five years constitute rather a long wait for
social recognition, and Mrs. Irwin had long since regarded herself as
quite outside