"I'll get used to him, I reckon," replied Hiram, adding, with a faint
gleam of sarcasm, "I've got used to a great many things these last
few years."

They went silently into the house, Adelaide and Arthur feeling that their
father had quite unreasonably put a damper upon their spirits--a feeling
which he himself had. He felt that he was right, and he was puzzled to
find himself, even in his own mind, in the wrong.

"He's hopelessly old-fashioned!" murmured Arthur to his sister.

"Yes, but _such_ a dear," murmured Adelaide.

"No wonder _you_ say that!" was his retort. "You wind him round
your finger."

In the sitting room--the "back parlor"--Mrs. Ranger descended upon them
from the direction of the kitchen. Ellen was dressed for work; her old
gingham, for all its neatness, was in as sharp contrast to her daughter's
garb of the lady of leisure as were Hiram's mill clothes to his son's
"London latest." "It's almost half-past twelve," she said. "Dinner's been
ready more than half an hour. Mary's furious, and it's hard enough to
keep servants in this town since the canning factories started."

Adelaide and Arthur laughed; Hiram smiled. They were all thoroughly
familiar with that canning-factory theme. It constituted the chief
feature of the servant problem in Saint X, as everybody called St.
Christopher; and the servant problem there, as everywhere else, was the
chief feature of domestic economy. As Mrs. Ranger's mind was concentrated