“Honor, do you want to go with me and sing at a factory meeting to-morrow at noon? I want a verse of ‘America’ to stir the meeting up before I speak.”
“Why, yes,” the girl agreed easily. “I can get off. And it’s good advertisement. My voice will be known a bit.”
“Young pig!” The brother apostrophized her. “Isn’t it in you to consider your flag?”
Honor reflected. “I don’t think so,” she decided with honesty. “Lots of people are doing things for the flag. I’m glad to have ’em. Me, I’ve got my voice and my career; that’s all I can attend to. I’m like a horse, capable of only one idea at a time.”
“Isn’t it in you,” interjected her father, unhurried, soft-voiced, “to consider your breeding? Your family traditions? A daughter of the Mannerings of Garden Court—singing to factory-hands! My word! the race is degenerating.”
“Not at all, dad. It’s improving. Family traditions don’t cut any ice,” remarked Honor tersely. “If Eric and I bothered with them we’d get nowhere.”
“For Eric it’s permissible,” Mannering stated. “It’s a statesmanlike accomplishment to make speeches. But you—entertaining workmen! Hideous! I suppose if I definitely objected it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Don’t definitely object, dear child,” Honor adjured her father. “You know you’re not fitted to handle Eric and me. But we do hate to go bang into your theories. So put ’em on a high shelf out of our reach, beautiful one. They don’t go with us at all, but they’re simply lovely on you.”
Eric Mannering laughed, not ill-pleased. It was comfortable to be assured that it was of no use trying to influence these handsome and unmanageable children of his. It would have disturbed his placid laziness to argue. “I can’t understand,” he considered, “how people in general control their young. I never could.” And with entire amiability he let it go at that.
“Your brother makes a corking speech, Miss Mannering.” She was driving next day with Eric and three other men, politicians, across the city to the great motor-factory.