em out.

Before George came in sight of the house he heard a rubbing, slapping
noise, and with a new distaste pictured his mother bending over a
washtub, suggesting a different barrier to be leaped. As he entered the
open space back of the house he wanted to kick the tub over, wanted to
see sprawling in the dirt the delicate, intimate linen sent down weekly
from the great house because his mother was exceptionally clever with
such things. To the uncouth music of her labour her broad back rose and
bent rhythmically. His father, wearing soiled clothing, sat on the porch
steps, an old briar pipe in his mouth.

Abruptly his mother's drudgery ceased. She stared. His father rose
stiffly.

"You've got yourself in trouble," he said.

George had not fancied the revolution had unfurled banners so easily
discernible. He became self-conscious. His parents' apprehension made
matters more difficult for him. They, at least, were too old to revolt.

"I suppose I have," he acknowledged shortly.

His father used the tone of one announcing an unspeakable catastrophe.

"You mean you've had trouble with Miss Sylvia."

"George!" his mother cried, aghast. "You've never been impertinent with
Miss Sylvia!"

"She thinks I have," George said, "so it amounts to the same thing."

His father's face twitched.

"And you know Old Planter can put us out of here without a minute's
notice, and where do you think we'd go? How do you think we'd get bread
and butter? You talk up, young man. You tell us what happened."

"I can't," George said, sullenly. "I can't talk about it. You'll hear
soon enough."

"I always said," his mother lamented, "that Georgie wasn't one to know
his place up there."

"Depends," George muttered, "on what my place is. I've got to find that
out. Look! You'll hear now."

A bald-headed figure in livery, one of the house servants, glided toward
them through the shrubbery, over that vanished boundary line, with
nervous haste. George squared his shoulders. The messenger, however,
went straight to the older man.

"Mr. Planter's on his ear, and wants to see you right off in the
library. What you been up to, young Morton?"

George resented the curiosity in the pallid, unintelligent eyes, the
fellow's obvious pleasure in the presence of disaster. It would have
appeased him to grasp those sloping shoulders, to force the grinning
face from his sight. A queer question disturbed him. Had Sylvia felt
something of the sort abou