you
love solitude----"

"Ah, John!"

"Well, at any rate, you can think best when you're alone."

"O John!"

"Well, father could. I can't. I need to rub against men. You don't."

"Oh!--h--h--John!" But when Mrs. March saw the intent was only
figurative she drew her lips close and dropped her eyes.

Her son reflected a minute and spoke again. "Why, mother, just that
Yankee's being here peeping around and asking his scared-to-death
questions has pulled my wits together till I wonder where they've been.
Oh, it's so! It's not because he's a Yankee. It's simply because he's in
with the times. He knows what's got to come and what's got to go, and
how to help them do it so's to make them count! He belongs--pshaw--he
belongs to a live world. Now, here in this sleepy old Dixie----"

"Has it come to that, John?"

"Yes, it has, and it's cost a heap sight more than it's come to, because
I didn't let it come long ago. I wouldn't look plain truth in the face
for fear of going back on Rosemont and Suez, and all the time I've been
going back on Widewood!" The speaker smote the family Bible with
Leggett's document. His mother wept.

"Oh! golly," mumbled John.

"Oh! my son!"

"Why, what's the trouble, mother?"

Mrs. March could not tell him. It was not merely his blasphemies. There
seemed to be more hope of sympathy from the damaged ceiling, and she
moaned up to it,

"My son a Radical!"

He sprang to his feet. "Mother, take that insult back! For your own
sake, take it back! I hadn't a thought of politics. If my words implied
it they played me false!"

Mrs. March was anguished wonder. "Why, what else could they mean?"

"Anything! I don't know! I was only trying to blurt out what I've been
thinking out, concerning our private interests. For I've thought out and
found out--these last few days--more things that can be done, and must
be done, and done right off with these lands of ours----"

"O John! Is that your swift revenge?"

"Why, mother, dear! Revenge for what? Who on?"

"For nothing, John; on widowed, helpless me!"

"Great Scott! mother, as I've begged you fifty times, I beg you now
again, just tell me what to do or undo."

"Please don't mock me, John. You're the dictator now, by the terms of
the will. They give you the legal rights, and the legal rights are all
that count--with men. I'm in your power."

John laughed. "I wish you'd tell the dictator what to do."

"Too late, my son, you've taken the counse