SIMEON A crisis does not create character, but is simply its test.

The young man who entered the gates of No.

64 Jefferson Street at five that afternoon was in all respects he who left them at a quarter before four, though he seemed very different to himself.

He went direct to his own room and did not descend until the supper bell sounded--that funny little old jangling bell he and Del had striven to have abolished in the interests of fashionable progress, until they learned that in many of the best English houses it is a custom as sacredly part of the ghostly British Constitution as the bathless bath of the basin, as the jokeless joke of the pun, as the entertainment that entertains not, as the ruler that rules not and the freedom that frees not.

When he appeared in the dining-room door, his mother and Del were already seated.