ves his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you'd
tend to business instead of fooling and fussing--All the time! When I
was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it
through thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and--Myra!
What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little
chunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half cold, anyway!"

Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making
hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, "Say, Rone, you
going to--"

Verona whirled. "Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we're
talking about serious matters!"

"Aw punk," said Ted judicially. "Ever since somebody slipped up and let
you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations
about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to--I want to use
the car tonight."

Babbitt snorted, "Oh, you do! May want it myself!" Verona protested,
"Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to take it myself!" Tinka wailed,
"Oh, papa, you said maybe you'd drive us down to Rosedale!" and Mrs.
Babbitt, "Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter." They glared,
and Verona hurled, "Ted, you're a perfect pig about the car!"

"Course you're not! Not a-tall!" Ted could be maddeningly bland. "You
just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of
some skirt's house all evening while you sit and gas about lite'ature
and the highbrows you're going to marry--if they only propose!"

"Well, Dad oughtn't to EVER let you have it! You and those beastly Jones
boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on Chautauqua
Place at forty miles an hour!"

"Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared of the car that
you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!"

"I do not! And you--Always talking about how much you know about motors,
and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!"

"You--why, my good woman, you don't know a generator from a
differential." Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a natural
mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for
the blueprints came.

"That'll do now!" Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted the
gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating
drug of the Advocate-Times headlines.

Ted negotiated: "Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take the old boat,
but I promised c