a dots of a decayed red, the points
astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button,
a class button, and a fraternity pin.

And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes
(which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not
over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I
guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our
new necktie is some smear!"

Babbitt barked: "It is! And while you're admiring yourself, let me tell
you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off
your mouth!"

Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which
is the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka:
"For the love o' Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn
flakes!"

When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his
wife: "Nice family, I must say! I don't pretend to be any baa-lamb, and
maybe I'm a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way
they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feel
like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think
after a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and
a decent education, it's pretty discouraging to hear them all the time
scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never--Curious; here
in the paper it says--Never silent for one mom--Seen the morning paper
yet?"

"No, dear." In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen
the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.

"Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right.
But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows!
New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw
the socialists! And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and
a lot of college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! And
a mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick agitator, this
fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitators
paid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering with
the Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off.
And there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is
dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step in there and
kick those Bolshevik cusses out."

"That's so," said Mrs.