“That isn’t what I should mind the most.”  It was the youngest daughter speaking again.  “I’ve been with mother when she has made remarks about the patients in the hospital, loud enough for them to hear, and I was so mortified I wanted to sink through the floor, And you simply can’t shut mother up.  Of course she doesn’t realize how it sounds; she doesn’t believe they hear her, but I know they do.  I wonder how mother would like to have us stand around her—­and we know her and love her—­and have us say she was getting deaf, or her hair was coming out, or her memory was beginning to fail, or—­”

The Oldest Trustee smiled grimly.  “Oh, don’t stop, my dear.  If there is any other failing you can think of—­” She opened her eyes with a start.  “Goodness gracious!” she exclaimed.  “My grandson is in college five hundred miles away, and my daughter is abroad.  Have I been dreaming?”

The Meanest Trustee unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a cigar.  He did not intend that his sons or his servants should smoke at his expense; furthermore, it was well not to spread temptation before others.  He took up the evening paper and examined the creases carefully.  He wished to make sure it had not been unfolded before; being the one to pay for the news in his house, he preferred to be the first one to read it.  The creases proved perfectly satisfactory; so he lighted his cigar, crossed his feet, and settled himself—­content in his own comfort.  The smoke spun into spirals about his head; and after he had skimmed the cream of the day’s events he read more leisurely, stopping to watch the spirals with a certain lazy enjoyment.  They seemed to grow increasingly larger.  They spun themselves about into all kinds of shapes, wavering and illusive, that defied the somewhat atrophied imagination of the Meanest Trustee.

“Hallucinations,” he barked to himself.  “I believe I understand now what is implied when people are said to have them.”

Suddenly the spirals commenced to lengthen downward instead of upward.  To the amazement of the Meanest Trustee he discovered them shifting into human shapes:  here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a lover and his lass, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of droll pipers—­with kilt and brata and cap.  It made him feel as if he had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into form and color, motion and music.  The pipers piped; the figures danced, whirling and whirling about him, and their laughter could be heard above the pipers’ music.

“Stop!” barked the Meanest Trustee at last; but they only danced the faster.  “Stop!” And he shook his fist at the pipers, who played louder and merrier.  “Stop!” And he pounded the arms of his chair with both hands.  “I hate music!  I hate children!  I hate noise and confusion!  Stop!  I say.”