“What are you and Scott aiming at?  Are you going to try to start an epidemic among the Rose-beetles?” he inquired.

“Oh, it’s far too early to even outline our ideas——­”

“That’s right; don’t tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about!  I’ll never say a word, Kathleen, only if you’ll take my advice, feed ’em fungus!  Stuff ’em with it three times a day—­give it to them boiled, fried, au gratin, a la Newburg!  That’ll fetch ’em!...  How is old Scott, anyway?”

“Perfectly well,” she said demurely.  “He informs us daily that he weighs one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his snow-shoes.  He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that he isn’t man enough.  You know, as a matter of fact, we’re all behaving like very silly children up here.  Goodness knows what the servants think.”  Her smiling face became graver.

“I am so glad that matters are settled and that there’s enough of your estate left to keep your mother and Naida in comfort.”

He nodded.  “How is Scott coming out?”

“Why—­he’ll tell you.  I don’t believe he has very much left.  Geraldine’s part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town, if she and Scott conclude to keep it.  Old Mr. Tappan has been quite wonderful.  Why, Duane, he’s a perfect old dear; and we all are so terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod.”

“He’s a funny old duck,” mused Duane.  “That son of his, Peter, has had the ‘indiwidool cultiwated’ clean out of him.  He’s only a type, like Gibson’s drawings of Tag’s son.  Old Tappan may be as honest as a block of granite, but it’s an awful thing that he should ever have presided over the destinies of children.”

Kathleen sighed.  “According to his light he was faithful.  I know that his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care for anything else—­to realise that there was anything else or anybody else except their wishes and themselves to consider....  But, Duane, you see the right quality was latent in them.  They are coming out—­they have emerged splendidly.  It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course, but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual social instincts of the House of Seagrave.  Educated according to my own ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set with which they are identified....  And the only serious flaw in the Seagraves was—­weakness.”

Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night.

“I don’t know.  Tappan’s poison may have been the antidote for them in this case.  Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine—­suffered?”

“Yes.”