“I begin to gather,” surmised Morrison, “that you must have a remarkable father and mother.  What are they like?”

“Well,” said Sylvia thoughtfully, “Mother’s the bravest thing you ever saw.  She’s not afraid of anything!  I don’t mean cows, or the house-afire, or mice, or such foolishness.  I mean life and death, and sickness and poverty and fear....”

Morrison nodded his head understandingly, a fine light of appreciation in his eyes, “Not to be afraid of fear—­that’s splendid.”

Sylvia went on to particularize.  “When any of us are sick—­it’s my little brother Lawrence who is mostly—­Judith and I are always well—­Father just goes all to pieces, he gets so frightened.  But Mother stiffens her back and makes everything in the house go on just as usual, very quiet, very calm.  She holds everything together tight.  She says it’s sneaking and cowardly if you’re going to accept life at all, not to accept all of it—­the sour with the sweet—­and not whimper.”

“Very fine,—­very fine!  Possibly a very small bit ... grim?” commented Morrison, with a rising inflection.

“Oh, perhaps, a little!” agreed Sylvia, as if it did not matter; “but I can’t give you any idea of Mother.  She’s—­she’s just great!  And yet I couldn’t live like her, without wanting to smash everything up.  She’s somebody that Seneca would have liked.”

“And your father?” queried Morrison.

“Oh, he’s great too—­dear Father—­but so different!  He and Mother between them have just about all the varieties of human nature that are worth while!  Father’s red-headed (though it’s mostly gray now), and quick, and blustering, and awfully clever, and just adored by his students, and talks every minute, and apparently does all the deciding, and yet ... he couldn’t draw the breath of life without Mother; and when it comes right down to doing anything, what he always does is what he knows will come up to her standard.”

Morrison raised delightedly amused hands to heaven.  “The Recording Angel domiciled in the house!” he cried.  “It had never occurred to me before how appallingly discerning the eye of the modern offspring must be.  Go on, go on!”

Elated by the sensation of appearing clever, Sylvia continued with a fresh flow of eloquence.  “And there never was such a highly moral bringing-up as we children have had.  It’s no fault of my family’s if I’ve turned out a grasping materialist!  I was brought up”—­she flamed out suddenly as at some long-hoarded grievance—­“I was brought up in a moral hot-house, and I haven’t yet recovered from the shock of being transplanted into real earth in the real world.”

Morrison paid instant tribute to her aroused and serious feeling by a grave look of attention.  “Won’t you explain?” he asked.  “I’m so dull I don’t follow you.  But I haven’t been so interested in years.”