“I had a visit from David’s brother this morning,” put in Mr. Cord, “the editor of your favorite morning paper.”

“Ben Moreton, here!  Oh, father, why didn’t you call me?  Yes, I know,” she added, as her father opened his mouth to say that she had left most particular instructions that she was to be allowed to sleep as late as she could, “I know, but you must have known I should have wanted to look David’s brother over.  Has he long hair?  Does he wear a soft tie?  Did you hate him?”

“Eddie didn’t take much of a fancy to him.”

“I should say not.  A damned, hollow-eyed fanatic.”

“Is he as good-looking as David, father?  What does he look like?”

Mr. Cord hesitated.  “Well, a little like my engraving of Thomas Jefferson as a young man.”

“He looks as if he might have a bomb in his pocket.”

“Oh, Eddie, do keep quiet, there’s a dear, and let father give me one of his long, wonderful accounts.  Go ahead, father.”

“Well,” said Mr. Cord, helping himself from a dish that Tomes was presenting to him, “as I told you, Eddie had dropped in very kindly to scold me about you, when Tomes announced Mr. Moreton.  Tomes thought he ought to be put straight out of the house.  Didn’t you, Tomes?”

“No, sir,” said Tomes, who was getting used to his employer, although he did not encourage this sort of thing, particularly before the footmen.

“Well, Moreton came in and said, very simply—­”

“Has he good manners, father?”

“He has no manners at all,” roared Eddie.

“Oh, how nice,” said Crystal, of whom it might be asserted without flattery that she now understood in perfection the art of irritating Eddie.

“He is very direct and natural,” her father continued.  “He has a lot more punch than your brother-in-law, my dear.  In fact, I was rather impressed with the young fellow until he and Eddie fell to quarreling.  Things did not go so well, then.”

“You mean,” said Crystal, the gossip rather getting the best of the reformer in her, “that he lost his temper horribly?”

“I should say he did,” said Eddie.

“Well, Eddie, you know you were not perfectly calm,” answered Cord.  “Let us say that they both lost their tempers, which is strange, for as far as I could see they were agreed on many essentials.  They both believe that one class in the community ought to govern the other.  They both believe the world is in a very bad way; only, according to Eddie, we are going to have chaos if capital loses its control of the situation; and according to Moreton we are going to have chaos if labor doesn’t get control.  So, as one or the other seems bound to happen, we ought to be able to adjust ourselves to chaos.  In fact, Crystal, I have been interviewing McKellar about having a chaos cellar built in the garden.”

Eddie pushed back his plate; it was empty, but the gesture suggested that he could not go on choking down the food of a man who joked about such serious matters.