She no longer took Aunt Bessie Smail seriously enough to struggle for independence.  She saw that Aunt Bessie did not mean to intrude; that she wanted to do things for all the Kennicotts.  Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected with laughter.  She divined that when Aunt Bessie came in with a jar of wild-grape jelly she was waiting in hope of being asked for the recipe.  After that she could be irritated but she could not be depressed by Aunt Bessie’s simoom of questioning.

She wasn’t depressed even when she heard Mrs. Bogart observe, “Now we’ve got prohibition it seems to me that the next problem of the country ain’t so much abolishing cigarettes as it is to make folks observe the Sabbath and arrest these law-breakers that play baseball and go to the movies and all on the Lord’s Day.”

Only one thing bruised Carol’s vanity.  Few people asked her about Washington.  They who had most admiringly begged Percy Bresnahan for his opinions were least interested in her facts.  She laughed at herself when she saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much as ever.

Her baby, born in August, was a girl.  Carol could not decide whether she was to become a feminist leader or marry a scientist or both, but did settle on Vassar and a tricolette suit with a small black hat for her Freshman year.

VI

Hugh was loquacious at breakfast.  He desired to give his impressions of owls and F Street.

“Don’t make so much noise.  You talk too much,” growled Kennicott.

Carol flared.  “Don’t speak to him that way!  Why don’t you listen to him?  He has some very interesting things to tell.”

“What’s the idea?  Mean to say you expect me to spend all my time listening to his chatter?”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, he’s got to learn a little discipline.  Time for him to start getting educated.”

“I’ve learned much more discipline, I’ve had much more education, from him than he has from me.”

“What’s this?  Some new-fangled idea of raising kids you got in Washington?”

“Perhaps.  Did you ever realize that children are people?”

“That’s all right.  I’m not going to have him monopolizing the conversation.”

“No, of course.  We have our rights, too.  But I’m going to bring him up as a human being.  He has just as many thoughts as we have, and I want him to develop them, not take Gopher Prairie’s version of them.  That’s my biggest work now—­keeping myself, keeping you, from ‘educating’ him.”

“Well, let’s not scrap about it.  But I’m not going to have him spoiled.”

Kennicott had forgotten it in ten minutes; and she forgot it—­this time.