In the back parlor at home he found Adelaide about to set out for the Whitneys.  As she expected to walk with Mrs. Whitney for an hour before lunch she was in walking costume—­hat, dress, gloves, shoes, stockings, sunshade, all the simplest, most expensive-looking, most unpractical-looking white.  From hat to heels she was the embodiment of luxurious, “ladylike” idleness, the kind that not only is idle itself, but also, being beautiful, attractive, and compelling, is the cause of idleness in others.  She breathed upon Arthur the delicious perfume of the elegant life from which he was being thrust by the coarse hand of his father—­and Arthur felt as if he were already in sweaty overalls.

“Well?” she asked.

“He’s going to make a common workman of me,” said Arthur, sullen, mentally contrasting his lot with hers.  “And he’s got me on the hip.  I don’t dare treat him as he deserves.  If I did, he’s got just devil enough in him to cheat me out of my share of the property.  A sweet revenge he could take on me in his will.”

Adelaide drew back—­was rudely thrust back by the barrier between her and her brother which had sprung up as if by magic.  Across it she studied him with a pain in her heart that showed in her face.  “O Arthur, how can you think such a thing!” she exclaimed.

“Isn’t it so?” he demanded.

“He has a right to do what he pleases with his own.”  Then she softened this by adding, “But he’d never do anything unjust.”

“It isn’t his own,” retorted her brother.  “It belongs to us all.”

“We didn’t make it,” she insisted.  “We haven’t any right to it, except to what he gives us.”

“Then you think we’re living on his charity?”

“No—­not just that,” she answered hesitatingly.  “I’ve never thought it out—­never have thought about it at all.”

“He brought us into the world,” Arthur pursued.  “He has accustomed us to a certain station—­to a certain way of living.  It’s his duty in honesty and in honor to do everything in his power to keep us there.”

Del admitted to herself that this was plausible, but she somehow felt that it was not true.  “It seems to me that if parents bring their children up to be the right sort—­useful and decent and a credit,” said she, “they’ve done the biggest part of their duty.  The money isn’t so important, is it?  At least, it oughtn’t to be.”

Arthur looked at her with angry suspicion.  “Suppose he made a will giving it all to you, Del,” he said, affecting the manner of impartial, disinterested argument, “what would you do?”

“Share with you, of course,” she answered, hurt that he should raise the question at a time when raising it seemed an accusation of her, or at least a doubt of her.