If it had been the Eskimos who had seized England and picked out pretty titles as earls eight hundred years ago, then the Best Families, both British and American, would today be claiming descent from Oley the Blubber.

Just so, a Staybridge ancestor, in Salem in the early 1700’s, a pious man, fond of sermons about hell-fire, was a shipowner who from the West Indies brought molasses which he distilled into rum, which he shipped to Africa, where it was exchanged for kidnapped Negroes, who were taken as slaves to the West Indies, to be exchanged for molasses, with a profit at every corner of the triangle. So his descendants were able to become college founders, cabinet members, and Putnam Staybridges.

Putnam was so aristocratic that he dared, even in 1936, to wear a small beard. Perhaps he had slid down a little from the family standard, in that he was merely a clock manufacturer and a bank director, but he was first or second cousin to an ambassador, a Harvard professor, an Episcopalian bishop, and to the spouse of a Neapolitan duke; and his stamp collection contained a unique hexagonal black Swiss–Guiana specimen.

When Howard Cornplow lumberingly, Sara tensely, and the black-enamel-eyed organizer, Eugene Silga, placidly, came roaring with Guy into the Staybridge mansion, Putnam was artistically seated in the library, holding an Elzevir Apuleius in his lap and tapping the walnut chair arm with his eyeglasses . . . He had owned the Apuleius for ten years and had not, to date, read ten words beyond the title page. And he had been arranged here, tapping the glasses, for half an hour, ever since Guy had telephoned to announce this dreadful visitation.

He arose, for the purpose of bowing to Sara, looking quizzically at Howard, and snubbing Gene Silga, and went back to sitting, to tapping, and to glancing at his book.

Behind him was his daughter, Annabel, and Annabel was, to be brief, a darling. She was a tousled, smiling, shy, sloppy, brown-haired, easygoing, very pretty, happily cynical darling of nineteen or twenty, and Howard looked upon her — she looked upon the Norse god — with young rapture. Years ago they had met, at dances, but since she had been chased off to school at Farmington, they had never said anything more ardent than ‘Mave nexdance?’

Howard was jarred out of his adoration by Mr. Putnam Staybridge’s answer to whatever it was Guy had been babbling:

‘So you intend to inaugurate in Sachem Falls a chapter of the Workers’ International Cohesion — the Coheeze? Delightful name; so suitable to a young man like yourself, Guy, who was brought up to the traditions of Henry Adams. You purpose to start a monthly called Protest & Progress, nicknamed “P. & P.”, to be cheaply printed and to unite the underprivileged of the entire world — no mean feat for three young men, even when abetted by so charming a young lady as Miss Sara Cornplow, considering that all the revolutionists in the world, including the accomplished Mr. Lenin, have hitherto failed to achieve this. And you wish me to contribute a sum which, I should judge from your slightly hysterical exposition, Guy, would be approximately a hundred dollars? . . . Now, Mr. Silga, will you be so good as to tell me whether this Protest & Progress will be definitely communistic?’