"Yes,--I guess he had been rather a rip among the bric-à-brac in his day
and sympathized with them?"

"No, it wasn't just that. You see these little china people had forsaken
their orderly comfortable world on the parlor table to climb very high.
It was a brave thing to do, even though they faltered and came back
after a while. It is what we all want to do, Patricia--to climb toward
the stars,--even those of us who are too lazy or too cowardly to attempt
it. And when others try it, we are envious and a little uncomfortable,
and we probably scoff; but we can't help admiring, and there is a rivet
in the neck of all of us which prevents us from interfering. Oh, yes,
we little china people have a variety of rivets, thank God, to prevent
too frequent nodding and too cowardly a compromise with
baseness,--rivets that are a part of us and force us into flashes of
upright living, almost in spite of ourselves, when duty and inclination
grapple. There is always the thing one cannot do for the reason that one
is constituted as one is. That, I take it, is the real rivet in
grandfather's neck and everybody else's."

He spoke disjointedly, vaguely, but the girl nodded. "I think I
understand, Olaf. Only, it is a two-edged rivet--to mix metaphors--and
keeps us stiffnecked against all sorts of calls. No, I am not sure that
the thing one cannot do because one is what one is, proves to be always
a cause for international jubilations and fireworks on the lawn."




II