The gray shadow over Hiram’s face grew grayer.  “But you ought to rest,” Mrs. Whitney went on.  “You and Charles both ought to rest.  It’s ridiculous, the way American men act.  Now, Charles has never taken a real vacation.  When he does go away he has a secretary with him and works all day.  But at least he gets change of scene, while you—­you rarely miss a day at the mills.”

“I haven’t missed a whole day in forty-three years,” replied Hiram, “except the day I got married, and I never expect to.  I’ll drop in the harness.  I’d be lost without it.”

“Don’t you think that’s a narrow view of life?” asked Mrs. Whitney.  “Don’t you think we ought all to take time to cultivate our higher natures?”

“What do you mean by higher natures?”

Mrs. Whitney scented sarcasm and insult.  To interrogate a glittering generality is to slur its projector; she wished her hearers to be dazzled, not moved to the impertinence of cross-examination.  “I think you understand me,” she said loftily.

“I don’t,” replied Hiram.  “I’m only a cooper and miller.  I haven’t had the advantages of a higher education”—­this last with a steady look toward his son, approaching from the direction of the stables.  The young man was in a riding suit that was too correct at every point for good taste, except in a college youth, and would have made upon anyone who had been born, or initiated into, the real mysteries of “good form” an impression similar to that of Mrs. Whitney’s costume and accent and manner.  There was the note of the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied—­the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all.  It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong.  The falseness, the absence of the quality called “the real thing,” made him bitter and sad.  And, when his son joined them and walked up and down with them, he listened with heavier droop of face and form to the affected chatter of the young “man of the world” and the old “grande dame” of Chicago society.  They talked the language and the affairs of a world he had never explored and had no wish to explore; its code and conduct, his training, his reason and his instinct all joined in condemning as dishonorable shirking of a man’s and woman’s part in a universe so ordered that, to keep alive in it, everyone must either work or steal.

But his boy was delighted with the conversation, with Mrs. Whitney, and, finally, with himself.  A long, hard ride had scattered his depression of many weeks into a mere haze over the natural sunshine of youth and health; this haze now vanished.  When Mrs. Whitney referred to Harvard, he said lightly, “You know I was plucked.”

“Ross told me,” said she, in an amused tone; “but you’ll get back all right next fall.”