FEJEVARY:  (stiffly) Very well, I will discontinue the argument I’m making now.  I’ve been trying to save you from—­pretty serious things.  The regret of having stood in the way of Morton College—­(his voice falling) the horror of having driven your father insane.

MADELINE:  What?

FEJEVARY:  One more thing would do it.  Just the other day I was talking with Professor Holden about your father.  His idea of him relates back to the pioneer life—­another price paid for this country.  The lives back of him were too hard.  Your great-grandmother Morton—­the first white woman in this region—­she dared too much, was too lonely, feared and bore too much.  They did it, for the task gave them a courage for the task.  But it—­left a scar.

MADELINE:  And father is that—­(can hardly say it)—­scar. (fighting the idea) But Grandfather Morton was not like that.

FEJEVARY:  No; he had the vision of the future; he was robust with feeling for others. (gently) But Holden feels your father is the—­dwarfed pioneer child.  The way he concentrates on corn—­excludes all else—­as if unable to free himself from their old battle with the earth.

MADELINE:  (almost crying) I think it’s pretty terrible to—­wish all that on poor father.

FEJEVARY:  Well, my dear child, it’s life has ‘wished it on him’.  It’s just one other way of paying the price for his country.  We needn’t get it for nothing.  I feel that all our chivalry should go to your father in his—­heritage of loneliness.

MADELINE:  Father couldn’t always have been—­dwarfed.  Mother wouldn’t have cared for him if he had always been—­like that.

FEJEVARY:  No, if he could have had love to live in.  But no endurance for losing it.  Too much had been endured just before life got to him.

MADELINE:  Do you know, Uncle Felix—­I’m afraid that’s true? (he nods) Sometimes when I’m with father I feel those things near—­the—­the too much—­the too hard,—­feel them as you’d feel the cold.  And now that it’s different—­easier—­he can’t come into the world that’s been earned.  Oh, I wish I could help him!

(As they sit there together, now for the first time really together, there is a shrill shout of derision from outside.)

MADELINE:  What’s that? (a whistled call) Horace!  That’s Horace’s call.  That’s for his gang.  Are they going to start something now that will get Atma in jail?

FEJEVARY:  More likely he’s trying to start something. (they are both listening intently) I don’t think our boys will stand much more.

(A scoffing whoop.  MADELINE springs to the window; he reaches it ahead and holds it.)

FEJEVARY:  This window stays closed.

(She starts to go away, he takes hold of her.)

MADELINE:  You think you can keep me in here?

FEJEVARY:  Listen, Madeline—­plain, straight truth.  If you go out there and get in trouble a second time, I can’t make it right for you.