“I know! he was a farmer,” said Ben.

“Now, Ben, he was a Roman—­let me tell,” said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.

“You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing.”

“Yes, but before that—­that didn’t come first—­people wanted him,” said Letty.

“Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,” insisted Ben.  “He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his advice.  And he was a brave man, and could fight.  And so could my father—­couldn’t he, mother?”

“Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,” said Letty, frowning.  “Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak.”

“Letty, I am ashamed of you,” said her mother, wringing out the caps from the tub.  “When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see if he could not tell the story.  How rude you look, pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows!  Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so.” (Mrs. Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation, and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) “Now, Ben.”

“Well—­oh—­well—­why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, and—­I can’t tell it just how you told it—­ but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything—­”

“Dictator, now,” said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish to make her mother repent.

“Very well, dictator!” said Ben, contemptuously.  “But that isn’t a good word:  he didn’t tell them to write on slates.”

“Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that,” said Mrs. Garth, carefully serious.  “Hark, there is a knock at the door!  Run, Letty, and open it.”

The knock was Fred’s; and when Letty said that her father was not in yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative.  He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there.  He put his arm round Letty’s neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his usual jokes and caresses.

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly continuing her work—­

“You, Fred, so early in the day?  You look quite pale.  Has anything happened?”

“I want to speak to Mr. Garth,” said Fred, not yet ready to say more—­ “and to you also,” he added, after a little pause, for he had no doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in the end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.

“Caleb will be in again in a few minutes,” said Mrs. Garth, who imagined some trouble between Fred and his father.  “He is sure not to be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this morning.  Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?”