"Is it because she gives you food when you are hungry that you love your parent? Or can you give me another reason?" continued Mrs. Van Duser, ignoring the comprehensive statement advanced by the boy.

Carroll glanced doubtfully after his mother, as she hastily withdrew to look after the luncheon table.

"I—don't know," he stammered. "I guess I like her when I'm hungry just the same."

"C., aged eight years, unable to enumerate reasons for fondness of parent," wrote Mrs. Van Duser, with every appearance of satisfaction. "The reasoning faculties apparently dormant at this age."

"What are you most afraid of?" was her[Pg 55] next question, accompanied by an ingratiating smile, calculated to disarm youthful timidity.

[Pg 55]

At this moment Richard, who had been peacefully asleep on the sofa, awoke, and becoming slowly aware of the majestic presence at his side, set up a doleful cry.

Whereupon Mrs. Van Duser noted neatly that "an unexpected visual impression evidently caused anxiety, without any assignable reason, in the normal infant R."

And when the normal infant scrambled down from the couch and retreated kitchenward under the careful supervision of his older brother, she observed further that "the dawning of the paternal instinct of protection was observable in the child C."

[Pg 56]

[Pg 56]

VI

The conduct of the children at the luncheon table was marked by such unexampled propriety of manner that Mrs. Van Duser was visibly disappointed. She could hardly have been expected to know that Elizabeth had resorted to shameless bribery in advance of the meal with a shining coin in each small pocket, "to be spent exactly as you choose," and that Richard was taking his food in the kitchen under the lax supervision of the Norwegian maid. Still the occasion was not wholly barren of material for a trained psychologist, as Mrs. Van Duser was pleased to term herself.

"The psychophysical processes," she observed learnedly, "should be closely observed by the wise guardian, in order to properly graft desired complications on native reactions."

"I am afraid I do not altogether understand," murmured Elizabeth, secretly grateful that her guest's 

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