“Mr. March is at home, yes,” she said very haughtily.  “He’s in his study,” and she led the way there, while the children went to their rooms.

“Well, March,” Fulkerson called out at sight of him, “it’s all right!  The old man has come down.”

“I suppose if you gentlemen are going to talk business—­” Mrs. March began.

“Oh, we don’t want you to go away,” said Fulkerson.  “I reckon March has told you, anyway.”

“Yes, I’ve told her,” said March.  “Don’t go, Isabel.  What do you mean, Fulkerson?”

“He’s just gone on up home, and he sent me round with his apologies.  He sees now that he had no business to speak to you as he did, and he withdraws everything.  He’d ‘a’ come round himself if I’d said so, but I told him I could make it all right.”

Fulkerson looked so happy in having the whole affair put right, and the Marches knew him to be so kindly affected toward them, that they could not refuse for the moment to share his mood.  They felt themselves slipping down from the moral height which they had gained, and March made a clutch to stay himself with the question, “And Lindau?”

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “he’s going to leave Lindau to me.  You won’t have anything to do with it.  I’ll let the old fellow down easy.”

“Do you mean,” asked March, “that Mr. Dryfoos insists on his being dismissed?”

“Why, there isn’t any dismissing about it,” Fulkerson argued.  “If you don’t send him any more work, he won’t do any more, that’s all.  Or if he comes round, you can—­He’s to be referred to me.”

March shook his head, and his wife, with a sigh, felt herself plucked up from the soft circumstance of their lives, which she had sunk back into so quickly, and set beside him on that cold peak of principle again.  “It won’t do, Fulkerson.  It’s very good of you, and all that, but it comes to the same thing in the end.  I could have gone on without any apology from Mr. Dryfoos; he transcended his authority, but that’s a minor matter.  I could have excused it to his ignorance of life among gentlemen; but I can’t consent to Lindau’s dismissal—­it comes to that, whether you do it or I do it, and whether it’s a positive or a negative thing—­because he holds this opinion or that.”

“But don’t you see,” said Fulkerson, “that it’s just Lindau’s opinions the old man can’t stand?  He hasn’t got anything against him personally.  I don’t suppose there’s anybody that appreciates Lindau in some ways more than the old man does.”

“I understand.  He wants to punish him for his opinions.  Well, I can’t consent to that, directly or indirectly.  We don’t print his opinions, and he has a perfect right to hold them, whether Mr. Dryfoos agrees with them or not.”

Mrs. March had judged it decorous for her to say nothing, but she now went and sat down in the chair next her husband.

“Ah, dog on it!” cried Fulkerson, rumpling his hair with both his hands.  “What am I to do?  The old man says he’s got to go.”