show the bad state of his liver by sarcastically speaking
of farmers as honest husbandmen either; a farmer is a farmer, unless,
for lack of God's grace, he's a fool! I guess the folks are coming now.
I hope Allen won't knock down the house with that threshing-machine of
his. That's all this time. Let me see--you'd better tell your editor to
call on me now and then. What did you say his name was, Morton?"

"Atwill--Arthur P."

"Is he a son of that Ebenezer Atwill who used to be a professor in
Asbury College?"

"I'm afraid not, Aunt Sally; I don't think he ever heard of Ebenezer,"
replied Bassett, with all the irony he dared.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GRAY SISTERHOOD

Elizabeth House was hospitable to male visitors, and Dan found Sylvia
there often on the warm, still summer evenings, when the young women of
the household filled the veranda and overflowed upon the steps. Sylvia's
choice of a boarding-house had puzzled Dan a good deal, but there were a
good many things about Sylvia that baffled him. For example, this
preparation for teaching in a public school when she might have had an
assistant professorship in a college seemed a sad waste of energy and
opportunity. She was going to school to her inferiors, he maintained,
submitting to instruction as meekly as though she were not qualified to
enlighten her teachers in any branch of knowledge. It was preposterous
that she should deliberately elect to spend the hottest of summers in
learning to combine the principles of Pestalozzi with the methods of
Dewey and Kendall.

The acquaintance of Sylvia and Allen prospered from the start. She was
not only a new girl in town, and one capable of debating the questions
that interested him, but he was charmed with Elizabeth House, which was
the kind of thing, he declared, that he had always stood for. The
democracy of the veranda, the good humor and ready give and take of the
young women delighted him. They liked him and openly called him "our
beau." He established himself on excellent terms with the matron to the
end that he might fill his automobile with her charges frequently and
take them for runs into the country. When Dan grumbled over Sylvia's
absurd immolation on the altar of education, Allen pronounced her the
grandest girl in the world and the glory of the Great Experiment.

Sylvia was intent these days upon fitting herself as quickly as possible
for teaching, becoming a part of the established system and avoiding