"You too!" he exclaimed, resentfully. "Why should I make a good one? Why need I be one at all?"
"Oh, because you're smart, and then you've always been good."
The young man was suddenly filled with disdain. His anger returned. He felt how utterly out of accord he was with every one else. "Don't you think there is anything else required besides being 'smart' and 'good'?" He himself would have blushed at the tone in which he said this, could he have recognised it. "I'm smart because I happened to pass all my examinations. I got through the high school at eighteen: nearly everyone does the same. I'm good because I have never had a chance to be bad: I have never been out of Aunt Hester's sight long enough. Anybody could be good that way."
"But then older people know what is best for us, Fred."
"Why should they? They don't know what's beating inside of us away down here." The boy struck his breast fiercely. "I don't believe they do know half the time what is best, and I don't believe that God intends them to know."
