Hiram took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief, first blowing on them deliberately.
"Sure I do; that's why I'm sayin' it. If we shut this house we can fire the servants, all of 'em; then, when we come back we can get new ones, half as many and twice as good. Don't look at me that way, dearie. I hate like everything to disappoint you, but——" he reached over and stroked her white hand tenderly, "you know what I said about expenses? Well, I meant it then and I mean it now. We've got to economize."
"What about my relatives? Our guests?" the wife demanded angrily.
"I guess your relatives'll have to take their chances in a new deal, Eleanor. I'm goin' to have a little talk with 'em to-morrow morning. I told 'em at dinner. Don't worry, I ain't goin' to say a thing but what's for their good. Bet ye three dollars and a half, when ye hear my little speech—
"Hear your speech?" she blazed. "Do you think anything could induce me to be present while you humiliate members of my family? I think it's abominable."
"Hold on! There ain't anything humiliating in a little honest work."
"Work?" she gasped. "Hiram, you don't mean—you're not going to put my relatives—to work?"
Hiram shifted his legs with exasperating calmness, pulled at his short, gray mustache, and was about to reply, when Robert strolled in cheerily and went at once to Eleanor's bedside.
"How's the little mother to-night?" he asked affectionately. Whereupon, to his surprise and to Hiram's great discomfiture, the lady burst into a flood of tears.
"I'm so unhappy," she wailed. "Your father is treating me most—unkindly and—and——" her words were lost in hysterical sobbing.