d the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend
themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because
of the Scarlet Death--"

The adjective had caught Hare-Lip's ear.

"He's always saying that," he said to Edwin. "What is _scarlet?_"

"'The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles going
by,'" the old man quoted.

"It's red," Edwin answered the question. "And you don't know it because
you come from the Chauffeur Tribe. They never did know nothing, none of
them. Scarlet is red--I know that."

"Red is red, ain't it?" Hare-Lip grumbled. "Then what's the good of
gettin' cocky and calling it scarlet?"

"Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody knows?" he
asked. "Scarlet ain't anything, but red is red. Why don't you say red,
then?"

"Red is not the right word," was the reply. "The plague was scarlet.
The whole face and body turned scarlet in an hour's time. Don't I
know? Didn't I see enough of it? And I am telling you it was scarlet
because--well, because it _was_ scarlet. There is no other word for it."

"Red is good enough for me," Hare-Lip muttered obstinately. "My dad
calls red red, and he ought to know. He says everybody died of the Red
Death."

"Your dad is a common fellow, descended from a common fellow," Granser
retorted heatedly. "Don't I know the beginnings of the Chauffeurs? Your
grandsire was a chauffeur, a servant, and without education. He worked
for other persons. But your grandmother was of good stock, only the
children did not take after her. Don't I remember when I first met them,
catching fish at Lake Temescal?"

"What is _education?_" Edwin asked.

"Calling red scarlet," Hare-Lip sneered, then returned to the attack on
Granser. "My dad told me, an' he got it from his dad afore he croaked,
that your wife was a Santa Rosan, an' that she was sure no account. He
said she was a _hash-slinger_ before the Red Death, though I don't know
what a _hash-slinger_ is. You can tell me, Edwin."

But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance.

"It is true, she was a waitress," Granser acknowledged. "But she was a
good woman, and your mother was her daughter. Women were very scarce in
the days after the Plague. She was the only wife I could find, even if
she was a _hash-slinger_, as your father calls it. But it is not nice to
talk about our progenitors that way."

"Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a _lady_--"

"What's a