It's absurdly simple." "My!" exclaimed Gideon.
Harvey D.was suffering profoundly, but all at once his eyes flashed with alarm.
"Haven't those boots nails in them ?" he suddenly demanded.
"I dare say they have." "And you've been going across the hardwood floors ?" demanded Harvey D.
again.
"This is too absurd!" said Merle, grimly.
Harvey D.hesitated, then smiled, his alarm vanishing.
"Of course I was absurd," he admitted, contritely.

"I know you must have kept on the rugs." "Oh, oh!" Again came the dry, bitter laugh of Merle.
"Say," broke in Sharon, "you want to take a good long look at the next workingman you see." Merle swept him with a glance of scorn.

He stepped into the waiting car.
"I could no longer brook this spirit of intolerance, but I'm taking nothing except the clothes I'm wearing," he reminded Harvey D."I go to my comrades barehanded." He adjusted the knot of crimson at his white throat.

"But they will not be barehanded long, remember that!" Nathan Marwick started the car along the driveway.

Merle was seen to order a halt.
"Of course, for a time, at least, I shall keep the New York apartment.
My address will be the same." The car went on.
"Did that father know his own flesh and blood--I ask you ?" demanded Sharon.
"Dear me, dear me!" sighed Harvey D.
"Poor young thing!" said Gideon.
Merle, on his way to the train, thought of his hat.