hat. Remember I'm your father, and you've a right to do as
you're told. Haven't I given you everything--given you a home, and
all that, and are you goin' to defy me in my own house?"

"I don't want to defy you," she answered, "but if you're going to let
your temper run away with you, you can put on the brakes yourself.
And as for all you've done for me--maybe I'm ungrateful, but it
doesn't look half so big from my side of the fence."

"Well, what more do you want?" he demanded.

"For one thing, I wouldn't mind having a father."

"What do you mean? Ain't I your father?"

"No!" she cried. "No! No! There's no father here. You're just the
boss--the foreman on the farm. You board with mother and me. We see
you at meal-times. We wouldn't see you then if you didn't have to
make use of us in that way. If you have a spare hour you go to town.
You're always so busy, busy, with your little things, that you have
no time for big things."

"I didn't know it was an offence to be busy," he answered. "It's work
that makes money, and I notice you can spend your share. You're never
so haughty about me workin' when you want a ten-dollar bill for
somethin'. Work may be a disgrace all right from your point of view,
but money isn't, and in this country you don't get much of one
without the other."

"Now, Dad," she protested. "You're taking me up wrong. I don't think
work is a disgrace, and I'm willing to work as hard as anyone, but I
do think it's a shame that you should be thinking only of work, work,
work, when you don't need to. I'd like to see you think about living
instead of working. And we're not living--not really living, you
know--we're just existing. Just making little twenty-four hour cycles
that don't get us anywhere, except older. Don't you see what I mean?
We're living all in the flesh, like an animal. When you feed the
horses and put them under shelter you can't do anything more for
them. But when you feed and shelter your daughter you have only half
provided for her, and it's the other half, the starving half, that
refuses to starve any longer."

"I'm not kickin' on religion, if that's what you mean, Beulah," he
said. "You get goin' to church as often as you like, and--"

"Oh, it's not religion," she protested. "At least, it's not just
going to church, and things like that, although I guess it is a more
real religion, if we just understood. What are we here for, anyway?
Come now, you're a man of sense and experience