S

I

ABRA closed the door behind her softly, considerately, as though giving an object-lesson in the proper closing of doors, and advanced to the breakfast-table with the same fine perfection of manner, pausing to lean on her chair-back and look successively at the others.

"Mother, Ralston," she began, "I want you to consider something, quite impersonally, as though I were not concerned.' Chloe was also there, and Billy, Ralston's little, motherless son, but they played a minor part in the family councils.

Ralston half-started from his chair, then dropped back again. "Hang it, Sabra, I can't talk before I go to work," he protested with confused, helpless irritation, his hands fumbling as though to gather up his breakfast for flight. "You know how it puts me off. I felt really creative this morning. Oh, a writer ought to live by himself!"

Sabra took her seat with perfect reasonableness. "Very well. It will disturb Ralston, so we won't talk it over till later," she announced. "Mother dear, I hope you slept well. Good morning, Chloe and little Billy." She was handsome, weighty, as poised as though she breakfasted on a public platform with a well-bred unconsciousness of her audience. "I wonder if there is any fresh toast?"

Chloe, slim and brown and silent as some young foreigner, jumped up to wait on her. Mrs. Gage was reviewing household possibilities with a managing eye. She was a long, gaunt, soldierly woman, so lined and weathered that only from her children could one guess that she had ever been fine looking.

"Ralston, it wouldn't be much trouble. to have a tray for you every morning," she offered. "Chloe would carry it up. Wouldn't you, dear, to help your brother's work?"

Chloe's hesitation lasted a bare second, no longer than it took for her to answer her own instinctive protest with a family rebuke; but Ralston cut off her assent.

"Why trouble Chloe? She does enough for me, looking after my child. Billy won't always be a burden on you, Chloe," he added with sad patience. "It is only a question of my getting a fair chance to do

Mrs. Gage looked unhappy, as though personally reproached, and Sabra, with her trained pleasantness, offered a diversion. Ralston, will it disturb you if I tell Billy a dream I had about him? I think it will amuse him."

Ralston with one movement emptied his coffee-cup and rose from the table. "Oh, well, I have finished," he said. "Please don't telephone this morning if you can help it. I hear it. I hear every word. Thank Heaven, Billy can play outdoors today." And he went out, profiting little by that fine example of door-closing.

Sabra interlocked her fingers and looked out over them at the world. "Now, Mother, quite impersonally," she began, "if I make a good impression at the congress this afternoon, I am almost certain to be put in as the next president. I am being very seriously considered. In that case I ought to give up my office-work." Chloe started, and for an instant Mrs. Gage's alert face sagged into old age. "I know. I realize all the cost," Sabra spoke strongly. "But, looking at it as a whole, isn't the cause of eugenics more important than the earning of a small salary?"

Her mother tried to grapple fairly, then slipped down to a side-issue. "Your Uncle Harry won't think so," she said with an unconscious sigh.

"Uncle Harry is entirely private-spirited as opposed to public-spirited," Sabra explained. "He gave me today off most unwillingly. If I were president of the association, I could not possibly stay in his office and barter for free time. He considers me a crank. Well, perhaps I am, to want to work for unborn generations rather than for two or three individuals now. Only we must remember that for a great many years my father was considered a crank. I want you to look at it quite impartially."

There was a bare second for the girding up of tired muscles; then Mrs. Gage rose to it like the stanch old soldier that she was. "If you feel that is your work, Sabra, we'll find a way," she declared. "The children of Sereno Gage are not going to be kept back as he was. Shall I go and talk to your Uncle Harry about it?"

Sabra was finely radiant, as though already she heard the clapping hands and saw the upturned faces. "No, dear Mother, I will do that myself when the congress is over.

"But, Sabra," Chloe broke in, "won't the eugenics people pay you anything?' She spoke nervously, like one who knows she may seem ignoble, but is too worried to hide it. "You see, I pay the bills, so I have to realize-"

Sabra raised a hand for silence. "Not today, little sister," she said kindly. "I must not think of anything but my address. But will you, as a great favor, run over to Uncle Harry's with some papers? He wants them this morning. You can easily catch him before he leaves the house."

Chloe stood shadowed and silently protesting, knowing miserably that the others must be right, and yet rebelling at the fresh financial crisis ahead. Then, seeing her mother already alert on the new problem, she was ashamed of her cowardice, and ran off with the papers.

The morning was fresh and lovely, full of good promises. As she passed her father's statue, his kind quiet seemed to fall benignly on her heated mood. She paused to lean on the iron fence, forgetting her errand.

"You didn't bother about little salaries," she admitted. "That's why we have been so poor, of course. But you chose right. Oh, there isn't any question about that!" Her eyes dimmed. "I'll try, my dear,' she promised.

"Well, Chloe, burning a little incense at the family shrine?" asked a dry voice.

"Oh, Uncle Harry!" Chloe had turned likingly to a small, middle-aged gentleman whose big, white head was set so close to his stubby overcoat that he suggested a love-bird, and who gave her a shy, limp hand as he paused. "I was just going to see you. Sabra sent you these papers.'

"Oh, thank you. Kind of her to remember it, with all she's got on her mind." He seemed to mean just what he said, quite simply. "Sabra's pretty busy with the unborn generation," he went on, his mild face looking away from Chloe. "She has a fine platform presence, I hear. Great gift, that. Your father spent a lot of time on platforms, but he just got up there anyhow, so as to be heard. Saw your mother yesterday. I think she grows taller every year; she's about seven feet now. markable woman, Chloe."

Re

"Isn't she!" Chloe spoke impulsively, still moved by that brave girding up to a new struggle. "She's too fine, Uncle Harry;

"Yes," he assented. "She tells me she wants to get a studio for Ralston to work in, away from Billy. Says Billy's no respecter of ideas. Spoiled a fine emotional scene the other day-bumped his head and roared. Awfully hard on Ralston." Chloe had to laugh. "Well, it is," she insisted. "Yes.

Ralston's never had a real chance, it seems. Conditions've never been exactly right. When my Alex wants a chance to work out anything, he has to wait till Saturday night, when he gets home from the office fifteen minutes earlier. He's got up a rather clever invention, something to do with electricity. I don't know just what, but it goes. He can't be a real genius, though; he'll work anywhere."

At the mention of Alex, Chloe had visibly stiffened. 'He isn't nervous like Ralston," she said after a pause.

"Yes. I guess Harvard made Rawly nervous. Alex was shinning up electriclight-poles about that time; I suppose that steadied his nervous organization. Let's see, who put Ralston through college-old Miss Bowditch? And the Mortons educated Sabra. And you've all had Europe and violin lessons and the Grand Cañon of the Colorado." He sighed aloud. "I ought to have died, that's what. Great mistake to live on and support your family. My children don't get Harvard and Bryn Mawr and Europe, I can tell you. They just work, poor little devils."

Chloe laughed again. "But you would have had to die famous. It is because we are Sereno Gage's children that people have been glad to do things for us." "Oh, yes," he admitted. he admitted. "But they mightn't have known just how glad they were without your mother to show them. She's a wonder, that woman. Queer," he added, looking thoughtfully up at the statue, "we all supposed Reno was crazy. I spent twenty years explaining to people that he was only a step-brother, no blood-connection. Then I spent the next twenty trying to make 'em believe he was just like a real brother, close tie, devoted from childhood. Most of my best deals have gone through because my mother married his father. That's the way things go."

Chloe slipped a hand under his arm. "I do like you," she confided. "You're so understanding. I don't believe I could think anything too bad to tell you."