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spaghetti for the use of millions who lived in tiny apartments in cities and had never learned

how to make tomato sauce!

VII

Robbie Budd came visiting that winter. He had some kind of queer deal on; he was meeting with

a former German U-boat commander who had entered the service of a Chinese mandarin, and

this latter had been ousted and now wanted Budd machine guns so as to get back. He had got

the support of some bankers in French IndoChina, but they didn't want to buy French

munitions, for fear of publicity—a shady affair all round, but Robbie explained with a grin that

one had to pick up money where one could these days. No chance to sell any of the products of

peace in Europe now!

He told the same stories of hard times which his son had heard in Berlin and Vienna. There

were breadlines in all the American cities, and on street corners one saw men, and some women,

stamping their feet and holding out apples in their half-frozen hands. The price of apples having

slumped, this was a way to get rid of them; a nickel apiece, Mister, and won't you help a poor guy

get a cup of coffee? There was no way to count the unemployed, but everybody agreed that the

number was increasing and the situation was terrible. Robbie thanked God for the Great

Engineer whom he had helped to elect President; that harassed man was standing firm as a rock,

insisting that Congress should balance the budget. If it was done, business would pick up in the

end. It always had and always must.

Robbie had paid off one-half of the notes which he had given to Lanny, Beauty, and

Marceline as security for the money turned over to him during the Wall Street panic. He had

invested a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the three of them in United States

government bonds, and now tried to persuade them to shift it to stocks. They discussed the

matter for an hour or so, sitting in front of a blazing fire of cypress wood in the drawing-room of

the home. Beauty wavered, but Lanny said "No," and said it again and again.

"Look where steel is now!" exclaimed the father.

"But," argued the younger man, "you said exactly the same thing when you were here last time.

You were sure it couldn't go lower."

He took his father on a tour of the civilized world. Where was there a nation that had money

to buy American steel? Britain, France, Germany—all could make more than they could market,

and the smaller nations were kept going only by the fears of their creditors. Here was Robbie,

himself a steel man, reduced to selling to Chinese mandarins and South American revolutionists!

Russia wanted steel desperately, but had to learn to make it for herself because she had no

foreign exchange and nobody would trust her. "And you talk about steel 'coming back'!"

exclaimed the son.

Robbie couldn't answer, but neither could he change. He knew that Lanny got his ideas out

of his Pink and Red papers—which he kept in his own study, so as not to offend the eyesight of

his relatives and friends. All these papers had a vested interest in calamity; but they couldn't

be right, for if so, what would become of Robbie's world? He said: "Have it your way; but

mark what I tell you, if only Hoover can hold out against inflationary tendencies, we'll be

seeing such a boom as never was in the world before."

VIII

Lanny returned to the delights of child study. Truly a marvelous thing to watch a tiny

organism unfolding, in such perfect order and according to schedule. They had a book which

told them what to expect, and it was an event when Baby Frances spoke her first word two full

weeks ahead of time, and a still greater thrill when she made her first effort to get up on her feet.

All, both friends and servants, agreed that they had never seen a lovelier female infant, and

Lanny, with his imaginative temperament, fell to speculating as to what might become of her.

She would grow up to be a fine young woman like her mother. Would it be possible to teach her

more than her mother knew? Probably not; she would have too much money. Or would she?

Was there any chance of a benevolent revolution on the Viennese model, compelling her to do

some useful work?

He had the same thought concerning his half-sister, who was ripening early in the warm

sunshine of the Midi and in the pleasure-seeking of its fashionable society. Marceline was going to

be a beauty like her mother; and how could she fail to know it? From earliest childhood she had

been made familiar with beauty-creating and beauty-displaying paraphernalia: beauty lotions,

beauty creams, beauty powders and paints, all put up in such beautiful receptacles that you

couldn't bear to throw them away; clothing designed to reveal beauty, mirrors in which it was to

be studied, conversation concerning the effects of it upon the male for whom it was created. Self-

consciousness, sex-consciousness were the very breath of being of this young creature, paused on

tiptoe with excitement, knowing by instinct that she was approaching the critical period of her