And none of it mattered.  He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager.  But he was not over-gentle.  He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled:  “Yes, I guess we’re pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our new necktie is some smear!”

Babbitt barked:  “It is!  And while you’re admiring yourself, let me tell you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off your mouth!”

Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which is the family war.  Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka:  “For the love o’ Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn flakes!”

When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his wife:  “Nice family, I must say!  I don’t pretend to be any baa-lamb, and maybe I’m a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can’t stand it.  I swear, I feel like going off some place where I can get a little peace.  I do think after a man’s spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and a decent education, it’s pretty discouraging to hear them all the time scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never—­and never—­Curious; here in the paper it says—­Never silent for one mom—­Seen the morning paper yet?”

“No, dear.”  In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.

“Lots of news.  Terrible big tornado in the South.  Hard luck, all right.  But this, say, this is corking!  Beginning of the end for those fellows!  New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw the socialists!  And there’s an elevator-runners’ strike in New York and a lot of college boys are taking their places.  That’s the stuff!  And a mass-meeting in Birmingham’s demanded that this Mick agitator, this fellow De Valera, be deported.  Dead right, by golly!  All these agitators paid with German gold anyway.  And we got no business interfering with the Irish or any other foreign government.  Keep our hands strictly off.  And there’s another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is dead.  That’s fine.  It’s beyond me why we don’t just step in there and kick those Bolshevik cusses out.”

“That’s so,” said Mrs. Babbitt.

“And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls—­a preacher, too!  What do you think of that!”

“Humph!  Well!”

He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrine about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on.  She looked sympathetic and did not hear a word.  Later she would read the headlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements.

“What do you know about this!  Charley McKelvey still doing the sassiety stunt as heavy as ever.  Here’s what that gushy woman reporter says about last night:”