‘I mean . . . And so . . . Well, as I was trying to say: I don’t pretend to be a Rockefeller. I’m just a plain ordinary citizen of Sachem Falls, N.Y., and you highbrows, who love to talk so much about realism and seeing clearly, ought to appreciate the fact that I know what I am.’

Hazel had looked at Fred sympathetically, and she charged up with reinforcements. With the most restful prosiness, she told Eugene about the Spreadeagle Little Theatre of Sachem, about Howard’s remarkable success in baseball, as a boy, and about her cousins in California. This warm bath soothed them all, and Eugene eased out, with an abstracted farewell which said that he would never come back.

‘Did you really have to go out of your way to be insulting?’ demanded Sara.

‘Not very far! I never could understand why it was that thirty years ago we were supposed to be apologetic to all the visiting firemen from France and England for being American, and now we’re expected to apologize to Russia. When this young pup hits me in a tender spot . . .’

‘Your pocket-book, Father!’

‘You bet! It’s what you’ve always lived on, isn’t it, young lady, if you want me to be vulgar?’

‘I don’t!’

‘Well, when he sashays in here and tells me my duty . . .’

‘I wonder you didn’t spring on him something refreshing like, “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back where you came from?”’

‘Well, I did think of taking that up, but I wasn’t sure he came from some country I disliked enough to wish him off on it! But I respect him more than I do you. He has the decency to be openly a threat to every doggone thing I stand for, and risk his life in strikes, and prob’ly he lives on fifteen-twenty bucks a week, while the young folks like you sponge on your parents for all you can get, and are ashamed of yourselves for it, and take it out on us!’

‘Father!’

‘Absolutely. Maybe you’re not to blame personally. Whole country’s full of smart young people whose folks have sent ’em to school and done all they could to help ’em socially and financially, and the kids despise ’em for being so soft, and don’t for one second hesitate to correct their parents’ manners and historical dates! But I don’t intend to have any of those intellectual snobs in my house, not if I know it! Young lady, after children get to be eighteen or so, they have no more claim on their parents’ affection than anybody else. They’ve got to earn it!’

Sara rushed from the room, sobbing.

Fred paced a good deal.

‘Oh, hang it, I didn’t mean . . . But that girl, Sara, she got me so riled up, just when I’d laid myself out to be so polite to her and that dark-eyed comrade, that Bolshevik gigolo! Why can’t they be nice, like Annabel? There’s MY daughter. Not sure I’ll let her marry Howard, the stuffed sweater! But Sara . . . All right, all RIGHT! Shall I wait and apologize to her tomorrow, or go up and get it over now?’