lence to Channing.
"Antoinette says the milk is magnificent, but I'd rather have
something with more taste that isn't so grand. I wish I'd been born
before all this science had been found out. If we sneeze we have to
be sprayed, and if we cough we're sterilized or something, and the
only word in the English language Antoinette pronounces right is
germs! You'd think they were ghosts, the way she lifts her eyes and
raises her hands when she says it. And she don't know what they are,
either. Did you kiss me when I was a baby, Uncle Winthrop?"

"I did."

"In the mouth?"

"In the mouth."

"Well, they don't let anybody kiss babies that way now. But if ever
I have any I'm going to let people kiss them and squeeze them, too.
I mean nice people. I don't believe in scientifics for children."

"But, my dear Miss Warrick"--Mr. Laine was also waiting on his young
nephew--"suppose your husband does. Surely a man should have some
say in the upbringing of his family!"

"Father don't." Dorothea leaned forward and selected an olive
critically. "Father would let us have anything we want, but he says
mother must decide. He's so busy he hasn't time to see about
children. He has to make the money to buy us--"

"Milk." Channing pushed his plate back. "I hate milk. Gee! I'm
full. You can have my salad, Dorothea, if you'll give me your
ice-cream. It didn't make you sick the day you ate all that lady
left."

"You ate leavings!" Laine's voice made effort to be horrified.
"Dorothea Warrick ate leavings from a lady's plate!"

"It wasn't leavings. She didn't touch it. I was peeping through the
door and I heard her say she never ate trash. It was grand. Nobody
told me not to eat it, and I ate."

"An inherited habit, my dear." Laine put the almonds, the olives,
and the mints beyond the reach of little arms. "Once upon a time
there was a lady who lived in a garden and she ate something she
ought not to have eaten and thereby made great trouble. She had been
told not to, but being a woman--"

"I know about her. She was Eve." Dorothea took some almonds from
her uncle's plate and put one in her mouth. "She was made out of
Adam's rib, and Adam was made out of the dust of the earth. Ever
since she ate that apple everybody has been made of dust, Antoinette
says."

Channing sat upright, in his big blue eyes doubt and distress. "Was
Dorothea and me made out of dust, Uncle Winthrop?"

"Dust, mere dust, my man."