fect peach? That reminds me--that ungrateful minx gave two
dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise
any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her.
That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a
girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash
my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No
home complete without this handsome ornament!" he added.

My mother's lips came firmly together.

"It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blase
brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you
could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect
blonde."

"Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?" suggested Laurence, amused at her
manner.

"That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals," I
put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's
secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term
'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth.
Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a
wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the
helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red,
red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless
eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls,
and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and
drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin
Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.

He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason
being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At
any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more
than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by
what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the
whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the
almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.

"But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum," I
objected once.

"Figures," he smiled equably, "are only stubborn--on paper. When
they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce
them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things
are: _When in doubt, reach the stomach!_ There you are! That's the
universal eye-open