The Second Generation | Page 4

company. I'd be bored to death if I didn't have him.
He gives me an occupation."
At this the cloud settled on Ranger's face again--a cloud of sadness. An
occupation!
Simeon hid his face in Adelaide's shoulder and began to whimper. She
patted him softly. "How can you be so cruel?" she reproached her
father. "He has feelings almost like a human being."
Ranger winced. Had the daughter not been so busy consoling her
unhappy pet, the father's expression might have suggested to her that
there was, not distant from her, a being who had feelings, not almost,
but quite human, and who might afford an occupation for an
occupation-hunting young woman which might make love and care for
a monkey superfluous. But he said nothing. He noted that the monkey's
ribbon exactly matched the embroidery on Adelaide's dress.
"If he were a dog or a cat, you wouldn't mind," she went on.
True enough! Clearly, he was unreasonable with her.
"Do you want me to send him away?"
"I'll get used to him, I reckon," replied Hiram, adding, with a faint
gleam of sarcasm, "I've got used to a great many things these last few
years."
They went silently into the house, Adelaide and Arthur feeling that
their father had quite unreasonably put a damper upon their spirits--a
feeling which he himself had. He felt that he was right, and he was
puzzled to find himself, even in his own mind, in the wrong.

"He's hopelessly old-fashioned!" murmured Arthur to his sister.
"Yes, but such a dear," murmured Adelaide.
"No wonder you say that!" was his retort. "You wind him round your
finger."
In the sitting room--the "back parlor"--Mrs. Ranger descended upon
them from the direction of the kitchen. Ellen was dressed for work; her
old gingham, for all its neatness, was in as sharp contrast to her
daughter's garb of the lady of leisure as were Hiram's mill clothes to his
son's "London latest." "It's almost half-past twelve," she said. "Dinner's
been ready more than half an hour. Mary's furious, and it's hard enough
to keep servants in this town since the canning factories started."
Adelaide and Arthur laughed; Hiram smiled. They were all thoroughly
familiar with that canning-factory theme. It constituted the chief feature
of the servant problem in Saint X, as everybody called St. Christopher;
and the servant problem there, as everywhere else, was the chief feature
of domestic economy. As Mrs. Ranger's mind was concentrated upon
her household, the canning factories were under fire from her early and
late, in season and out of season.
"And she's got to wait on the table, too," continued Ellen, too interested
in reviewing her troubles to mind the amusement of the rest of the
family.
"Why, where's the new girl Jarvis brought you?" asked Hiram.
"She came from way back in the country, and, when she set the table,
she fixed five places. 'There's only four of us, Barbara,' said I. 'Yes,
Mrs. Ranger,' says she, 'four and me.' 'But how're you going to wait on
the table and sit with us?' says I, very kindly, for I step mighty soft with
those people. 'Oh, I don't mind bouncin' up and down,' says she; 'I can
chew as I walk round.' When I explained, she up and left in a huff. 'I'm
as good as you are, Mrs. Ranger, I'd have you know,' she said, as she
was going, just to set Mary afire; 'my father's an independent farmer,
and I don't have to live out. I just thought I'd like to visit in town, and

I'd heard your folks well spoke of. I'll get a place in the canning
factory!' I wasn't sorry to have her go. You ought to have seen the way
she set the table!"
"We'll have to get servants from the East," said Arthur. "They know
their place a little better there. We can get some English that have just
come over. They're the best--thoroughly respectful."
He did not see the glance his father shot at him from under his heavy
eyebrows. But Adelaide did--she was expecting it. "Don't talk like a
cad, Artie!" she said. "You know you don't think that way."
"Oh, of course, I don't admire that spirit--or lack of it," he replied.
"But--what are you going to do? It's the flunkies or the Barbaras and
Marys--or doing our own work."
To Hiram Ranger that seemed unanswerable, and his resentment
against his son for expressing ideas for which he had utter contempt
seemed unreasonable. Again reason put him in the wrong, though
instinct was insisting that he was in the right.
"It's a pity people aren't contented in 'the station to which God has
called them,' as the English prayer book says," continued Arthur, not
catching sensitive Adelaide's warning frown.
"If your