But Arthur privately suggested to Adelaide that she ought to try to persuade her mother.

"It will make her ill, all this extra work," said he.
"Not so quickly as having some one about interfering with her," replied Adelaide.
"Then, too, it _looks_ so bad--so stingy and--and--old-fashioned," he persisted.
"Not from mother's point of view," said Adelaide quietly.
Arthur flushed.

"Always putting me in the wrong," he sneered.

Then, instantly ashamed of this injustice, he went on in a different tone, "I suppose this sort of thing appeals to the romantic strain in you." "And in mother," said Del.
Whereupon they both smiled.

Romantic was about the last word anyone would think of in connection with frankly practical Ellen Ranger.