down here that will require some
handling, and I wish you'd come down after the campaign and talk it over,
with us. I've just about made up my mind that you're he man to tackle
it."

"All right, I'll come," I said.

"And stay with me," said George....

We went to his yellow-brick house for refreshments, salad and ice-cream
and (in the face of the Hutchins traditions) champagne. Others had been
invited in, some twenty persons.... Once in a while, when I looked up, I
met Maude's eyes across the room. I walked home with her, slowly, the
length of the Hutchinses' block. Floating over the lake was a waning
October moon that cast through the thinning maples a lace-work of shadows
at our feet; I had the feeling of well-being that comes to heroes, and
the presence of Maude Hutchins was an incense, a vestal incense far from
unpleasing. Yet she had reservations which appealed to me. Hers was not a
gushing provincialism, like that of Mrs. George.

"I liked your speech so much, Mr. Paret," she told me. "It seemed so
sensible and--controlled, compared to the others. I have never thought a
great deal about these things, of course, and I never understood before
why taking away the tariff caused so much misery. You made that quite
plain.

"If so, I'm glad," I said.

She was silent a moment.

"The working people here have had a hard time during the last year," she
went on. "Some of the mills had to be shut down, you know. It has
troubled me. Indeed, it has troubled all of us. And what has made it more
difficult, more painful is that many of them seem actually to dislike us.
They think it's father's fault, and that he could run all the mills if he
wanted to. I've been around a little with mother and sometimes the women
wouldn't accept any help from us; they said they'd rather starve than
take charity, that they had the right to work. But father couldn't run
the mills at a loss--could he?"

"Certainly not," I replied.

"And then there's Mr. Krebs, of whom we were speaking at supper, and who
puts all kinds of queer notions into their heads. Father says he's an
anarchist. I heard father say at supper that he was at Harvard with you.
Did you like him?"

"Well," I answered hesitatingly, "I didn't know him very well."

"Of course not," she put in. "I suppose you couldn't have."

"He's got these notions," I explained, "that are mischievous and
crazy--but I don't dislike him."

"I'm glad to hear you say that!" she answered quiet