Part 9

"Singular as the statement may sound, I'm prepared to say that I'm somewhat interested in my children's upbringing on my own account," he said coolly. "My wife has notions, as you call them, and one of them is that a father has quite as much responsibility in the training of the children as the mother. I believe she's right."

"Well, I can't see it that way," drawled Stanford. "I'm perfectly willing to leave the kids to Marian while they're small; when they're too big for her to handle I'll take 'em in hand. They'll obey _me_, you'd better believe, from the word go. I think as my father did, that a child ought to mind as though he were fired out of a gun."

"It seems to me a child is a reasonable being, and has a reasoning being's right to understand something of the whys and wherefores of his obedience," protested Sam, vaguely aware that he was quoting the opinions of someone else. "Besides that, don't they tell us a child's character is pretty well formed by the time he is seven?"

"Bosh!" exploded Stanford. "I wouldn't give a brass nickel for all the theories you can bundle together. There were no sort of explanations or mollycoddling coming to me, when I was a kid. It was 'do this, sir'; or 'don't do the other.' I can tell you, I walked a chalk-line till I was sixteen. Why, gracious! if I'd attempted to argue and talk back to my governor the way your boy talks to you--you needn't deny it, for I've heard him myself--I'd have stood up to eat for a week. I've done it more than once for simply looking cross-eyed, and I can tell you it did me good."

Sam Brewster eyed his companion with grave interest; there was no animosity in his tone and merely a friendly interest in his face as he inquired:

"You walked a chalk-line till you were sixteen, you say; what did you do then?"

Young Stanford's handsome dark face reddened slightly.

"I--er--well, you see I got red-hot at the pater one day because he--you see I'd grown pretty fast and was as tall as he was, and--er--I balked; thought I was too big to be thrashed, as I deserved. Why, you know what I did as well as I do, Sam. I've always been ashamed of it, of course, and of the trouble I made my mother. She was and is the best mother ever, mild and sweet-tempered; but she couldn't handle _me_. Why, man, I was a holy terror, and my boy Rob is exactly like me." He spoke complacently, almost triumphantly. "I'll take it out of him, though. Watch me!"

"Then you don't think we could both learn a thing or two from Judge Lindsay and other specialists about the way to manage and bring up our boys?" persisted Sam, a slow twinkle dawning in his blue eyes. "We know it all--eh? and don't require any enlightenment?"

"I know enough to bring up my own boy, I should hope," responded Stanford, with heat. "If he cuts up the way I did, I'll take it out of his young hide some day; that's a sure proposition."

"And then possibly, since he's so much like his father, he might balk--when he gets tall enough--and he might not--come back in three days, the way you did. Pardon me, old man, for speaking so plainly; but as long as our children play together and go to school together, your business and mine are one when it comes to their training. And if half the rich men in the country can afford to spend most of their time and millions of their dollars in improving the horses, cattle, pigs and poultry of the country, you and I won't be exactly wasting our time if we discuss child improvement occasionally."

"That's where you're off, Brewster; the discipline of a man's own children is a strictly private and personal matter. You'll excuse me if I say just what I think, and that is that the methods I adopt with my boy are none of your or any man's business."

"And I'm obliged to differ with you there; the way you bring up your boy is not only my business but everybody's business. It concerns the neighbourhood, the state, the nation and the world."

"Now you're ranting, my boy, and I can't listen to you. But I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll tell Mrs. Stanford to get us both invitations to attend the next of her 'mother's meetings.' I'll go, if you will, and we'll hold forth on our respective ideas at length. How does that strike you?"

"As an eminently sensible and sane proposition," Sam said coolly, as he rose to leave the car. "A parent's club--eh? A capital idea; well worth working up. I'll see you later with regard to it."

Stanford grinned derisively as he buried himself in the pages of his newspaper. "Brewster's getting to be a bally crank," he told himself. Then his eye fastened upon a paragraph heading with a reminiscent thrill. "Boy of fifteen runs away from home in company with a neighbour's son, after a disagreement with his father!"

His rapid eye took in the details, meagre and commonplace, of the missing lads and their home-life.

"Young rascals!" he muttered, and passed on to the political situation in which he was deeply interested. Curiously enough, though, that paragraph concerning the runaway boys recurred to his mind more than once during the day, bringing with it an unwontedly poignant recollection of his own headlong flight and ignominious home-coming, foot-sore and hungry after three days of wretched wandering. He had never forgotten the experience and never would. It had done him a world of good, he had since declared stoutly. But he shivered at the thought of his own son alone and hungry in the streets of a great city.

XIX

Elizabeth was quite as busy as usual looking after the interests of her small kingdom when Evelyn Tripp called that same morning.

"I have come," she said, "to say good-bye." Then in answer to Elizabeth's look of surprised enquiry, "The Stanfords came home quite unexpectedly last evening, so I shall return to Dorchester this afternoon. Mother has already gone; I've just been to the train with her."

Elizabeth surveyed her friend dubiously. "Perhaps you are not altogether sorry on the whole," she said, "though the children have behaved surprisingly well--for them."

"The baby is a dear," agreed Miss Tripp warmly; "but I'm afraid I didn't succeed very well with Robert. It seems to me the child's finer feelings have been blunted someway. When I spoke seriously to him about his unkindness to Carroll the other day, he made up a face at me. 'You can't whip me,' he said, ''cause you aren't my mother.'

"'Indeed I could whip, or hurt you in some other way, if I chose,' I told him, 'and if you were a stupid little donkey who wouldn't go, or a dog who couldn't be made to obey, I should certainly feel like switching you; but you are a boy, and you are fast growing to be a man. I am afraid, though, that you are not growing to be a gentleman.'

"'I guess I'm a gentleman, too,' he said rudely. 'My grandfather's a rich man, an' we're goin' to have all his money when he dies. We ain't poor like you.'"

"Shocking!" exclaimed Elizabeth; "what did you say to the child?"

"I explained to him what a gentle-man really was; then I told him about the knights of the Round Table. He is not really a bad child, Elizabeth; but he will be, if---- I wonder if I might venture to talk plainly to his mother?"

"You may talk and she will listen, quite without impatience," Elizabeth said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "But Marian is somewhat--opinionated, to put it mildly, and she is very, very sure that her own way is best. So I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good."

She smiled speculatively as she looked at her friend. It seemed to her that Evelyn was looking particularly young and pretty. There was a faint flush of colour in her pale cheeks and her eyes shone girlishly bright under their curtain of thick brown lashes. A sudden thought crossed Elizabeth's mind. And without pausing to think, she put it into words.

"Evelyn," she began, her own cheeks glowing, "I want you to stay with us over night; I really can't let you go off so suddenly, without saying good-bye to--to Sam, or--anybody," she finished lamely. "You must stay to dinner, anyway; I insist upon that much, and I will send you to the station in a cab."

Evelyn shook her head. "It is very good of you, Betty," she said; "but I really must go this afternoon. Mother will expect me."

"Does--Mr. Hickey know you are going?" demanded Elizabeth, abandoning her feeble efforts at finesse.

The faint colour in Evelyn's cheeks deepened to a painful scarlet. She met Elizabeth's questioning gaze bravely.

"No--o," she hesitated; "but----"

She paused, apparently to straighten out with care the fingers of her shabby little gloves; then she looked up, a spark of defiance in her blue eyes.

"Elizabeth," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that Mr. Hickey has asked me to marry him; but I----"

"Oh, Evelyn! How glad I am!"

"I refused him," said Miss Tripp concisely.

"Refused him! but why? Sam thinks him one of the finest men he knows, kind, good as gold, and very successful in his profession. You would be so comfortable, Evelyn, and all your problems solved."

Miss Tripp arose. She was looking both defiant and unhappy now, but prettier withal than Elizabeth had ever seen her.

"I don't want to be _comfortable_, as you call it, Betty," she said passionately. "I--I want--to be _loved_. If he had even pretended to--like me, even a little. But I--I had told him all about my perplexities, I'm sure I can't imagine why--except that I pined for something--sympathy, I thought it was, and he--offered me--money. Think of it, Elizabeth! And when I refused, he--offered to marry me. He said he could make me--comfortable!"

Her voice choked a little over the last word. "Of course," she went on, "I know I'm not young and pretty any more; but--but I--couldn't marry a man who was just sorry for me, as one would be sorry for a forlorn, lost ki-kitten!"

"He does love you, Evelyn; I'm sure he does," Elizabeth said convincingly. "Only he--doesn't know how to say so. If I could only----"

Miss Tripp looked up out of the damp folds of her handkerchief.

"If you should repeat to Mr. Hickey anything I have told you in confidence, Elizabeth, I think I should die of shame," she quavered. "Promise me--promise me you won't speak of it to anyone!"

Elizabeth promised at once, with an inward reservation in favour of Sam, who could, she was sure, bring order out of this sudden and unexpected chaos in her friend's affairs.

"I am positive that you are mistaken, Evelyn," she repeated, as she embraced and kissed her friend at parting. "I wish you would change your mind."

But Evelyn shook her head with the gentle obstinacy which Elizabeth remembered of old. "I seldom change my mind about anything," she said; "and in this case I simply couldn't. Good-bye dear, dear Betty; and thank you a thousand times for all your kindness to me."

She turned to wave a slim hand to Elizabeth, who stood watching her departure with a curious mingling of exasperation and regret.

A whiff of familiar perfume greeted her upon re-entering the sitting-room and her eyes fell at once upon Evelyn's muff, which she had deposited upon the floor beside her chair and quite evidently forgotten. It was a handsome muff of dark mink, a relic of Evelyn's more fortunate days. Elizabeth stood caressing it absent-mindedly, wondering how she could best restore it to its owner without vexatious delay, when her eyes fell upon Carroll and Doris coming in at the front gate with joyous hops, skips and jumps indicative of the rapture of release from school.

"Here, dears!" she exclaimed, "Aunty Evelyn has just gone, and she has left her muff; take it and run after her; then come directly home. Your lunch will be ready in fifteen minutes."

XX

All that Evelyn Tripp had said to Elizabeth was entirely true; her feelings had been hurt--outraged, she again assured herself, as she hurried away, her eyes blurred with tears of anger and self-pity. Yet deep down in her heart she felt sure that George Hickey loved her for herself alone, and that all was not over between them. She had refused him, to be sure, and in no uncertain terms; but that he was not a man to be daunted by difficulties, she remembered with a little thrill of satisfaction. All had not been said when their interview was terminated by the unlooked-for arrival of the Stanfords; and he had said at parting, "I must see you again--soon. I wish to--explain. I will come to-morrow."

He would come; she was sure of it, and as she pictured his vexed astonishment at finding her already gone, her eyes filled with fresh tears. "He doesn't even know my Dorchester address," she murmured with inconsistent regret. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear a masterful step on the sidewalk behind her; but at the sound of his voice she glanced up without the least surprise. It appeared to Evelyn that Mr. Hickey's presence at that particular instant was in full accord with the verities.

"I was afraid you might be leaving early," he said directly, his eyes searching her face with an open anxiety that filled her with a warm delight. "I--er--found that I could not apply myself to business as I should this morning, so I thought best to--er--see you without delay."

Evelyn's head dropped; a faint smile flitted about her lips.

"Indeed, I am just leaving this afternoon," she said, in a voice that trembled a little in spite of her efforts to preserve an easy society manner.

"And you were going without--letting me know," said Mr. Hickey, in the tone of one who derives an unpleasant deduction from an undeniable fact. He looked down at her suddenly. "Did you, or did you not intend giving me the chance to--er--continue our conversation of last evening?" he asked with delightful sternness.

She was sure now that he loved her; but her day had been long in coming and she could not resist the temptation to enjoy it slowly, lingeringly, as one tastes an anticipated feast.

"I thought," she murmured indistinctly, "that there was nothing more to--say." She was deliciously frightened by the look that came into his deep-set eyes.

"I asked you to marry me," he said deliberately, "and you--refused. I want to know your reasons. I must know them. I am not in the habit of giving up what I want, easily," he went on, his brows meeting in a short-sighted frown, which raised Evelyn to the seventh heaven of anticipated bliss. "I've always gotten what I wanted--sooner or later. I want--you, Evelyn, and--and it's getting late. I'm forty-two, and you----"

She blushed resentfully, for at that moment she felt twenty, no older. Nevertheless, something in her downcast face must have encouraged him.

"Won't you take pity on me, dear?" he entreated. "I'm old and ugly to look at, I know; but I _want you_, Evelyn."

She would have answered him then; the words trembled upon her lips.

"Aunty Evelyn! Aunty Evelyn!"

The two shrill little voices upraised in urgent unison pierced the confused maze of her thoughts. She looked around, not without a wilful sense of relief to see the two older Brewster children running toward her brandishing a muff, which she presently recognised as one of her own cherished possessions, un-missed as yet since her brief visit with Elizabeth.

"Mother found it on the floor after you'd gone, an' she said for us to run after you an' give it to you," Carroll began, with a large sense of his own importance. "Doris wanted to carry it; but I was 'fraid she'd drop it in the wet. I didn't drop it, Aunty Evelyn; but Doris threw some snow at me, an' it got on the muff, an' I stopped to brush it off. I thought we'd never catch up."

Doris had snuggled her small person between Mr. Hickey and Miss Tripp, where she appropriated a hand of each in a friendly and impartial way.

"I guess girls know how to carry muffs better'n boys," she observed calmly. "Carroll was too fresh; that is why I threw snow at him."

"Why, Doris dear, where did you ever learn such an expression?" murmured Miss Tripp, vaguely reproving.

Doris gazed up at her mentor with an expression of preternatural intelligence.

"Why, don't you know," she explained; "folks is too fresh when they make you mad, an' make you cry. Who made you cry, Aunty Evelyn? Did Mr. Hickey?"

"I wish you'd find out for me, Doris," said that gentleman gloomily. "I'd give anything to know."

Miss Tripp gazed about her with gentle distraction, as if in search of an entirely suitable remark with which to continue the difficult conversation. Finding no inspiration in the expanse of slushy street, or in the dull houses which bordered it on either side, she turned bravely to Mr. Hickey.

"I think," she said in a low voice, "that the children really ought to go home to--to--their luncheon."

Her eyes (quite unknown to herself) held an appeal which filled him with unreasoning satisfaction.

"You are entirely right," he agreed joyfully; "the children should go home immediately. They must be in need of food. Go home, children, at once. You are hungry--very hungry."

"Oh, no, we're not," warbled Doris. "An' we like to walk with you an' Aunty Evelyn. Mother said our lunch wouldn't be ready for fifteen minutes. We won't have to go home for quite a while yet."

At this Mr. Hickey laughed, more loudly than the humour of the situation appeared to demand. "Very good," he said firmly; "that being the case, I'll say at once what I had in mind without further delay; for I'm anxious to let the whole world know that I love you, Evelyn, and I hope you'll allow me to go on loving you as long as I live."

The events which followed immediately upon this bold statement Elizabeth learned as a result of her somewhat bewildered questionings, when her two children, breathless and excited from a competitive return, flung their small persons upon her at their own door.

"Now you just let me tell, Carroll Brewster, 'cause I got here first; Aunty Evelyn said----"

"We gave Aunty Evelyn her muff," said Carroll, taking unfair advantage of Doris' breathless condition. "And what do you think, mother, Doris said I was too fresh to Aunty Evelyn, and she said----"

"Aunty Evelyn cried when we gave her the muff, an' she said----"

"Aunty Evelyn didn't cry 'cause we gave her the muff," interpolated Carroll, with superior sagacity. "She was cryin' to Mr. Hickey, an' he said----"

"He said he'd give me most anythin'--a great big doll with real hair or a gold ring, or anythin' at all if I'd find out why Aunty Evelyn was cryin'."

"But, Doris dear, Mr. Hickey wasn't with Aunty Evelyn; was he?" asked Elizabeth, a fine mingling of reproof and eager curiosity flushing her young face.

"Mr. Hickey didn't say a big doll with real hair, or a gold ring," Carroll interrupted indignantly. "You just made up that part, Doris."

"I didn't make it up either; I thought it," retorted Doris. "He said he'd give me anythin' at all, an' I guess a great big doll with real hair is anythin'. So there!"

"I don't understand, children," murmured the smiling Elizabeth, who was beginning to understand very well, indeed. "You should have come home at once, instead of stopping to talk to Aunty Evelyn. Your luncheon is waiting."

"That's what Aunty Evelyn said," put in Carroll reproachfully, "an' Mr. Hickey said 'Go home at once, children; you're very hungry.' An' I was going; but Doris, she wouldn't go. She----"

"I wasn't a bit hungry then; but I am now, an' I smell somethin' good," observed that young lady, sniffing delicately.

"She said she wasn't in any hurry, an' I guess Mr. Hickey didn't like it. Anyway he laughed, an' he took right hold of Aunty Evelyn's hand, an' she cried some more."

"She didn't cry 'cause he squeezed her hand. She said 'I thought you didn't really like me.' An' Mr. Hickey----. Now don't int'rupt, Carroll; it's rude to int'rupt; isn't it, mother? Mr. Hickey said 'Yes, I do too!' Jus' like that he conterdicted."

"An' then Doris said, 'it's rude to conterdict,' right out to Mr. Hickey she said. That was an awful imp'lite thing for Doris to say; wasn't it, mother? I said it was."

"But Aunty Evelyn said _sometimes_ it wasn't rude to conterdict. An'--'n' she said she was glad Mr. Hickey conterdicted; 'cause she was 'fraid he wasn't goin' to; an' then----"

"She told us to run along home an' tell our mother she was very much mistaken this mornin'."

"No; she said to say our mother was perfec'ly right, an' she was----"

"Well, that's jus' exac'ly what I said. What did Aunty Evelyn mean, mother? An' why did Mr. Hickey make her cry?"

Elizabeth wiped a laughing tear or two from her own eyes. "I'm glad Aunty Evelyn found out that I was right," was all she said. "Now come, children, and let mother wash your hands. Celia has baked a beautiful gingerbread man for Carroll's lunch and a beautiful gingerbread lady for Doris and a cunning little gingerbread baby for Baby Dick."

"Oh, goody! goody!" shouted the children in ecstatic chorus.

In a trice their singular encounter with Aunty Evelyn and Mr. Hickey was forgotten in eager contemplation of the more obvious and immediate future of the gingerbread man, the gingerbread lady and the gingerbread child; each of whom, plump and shining, reposed in the middle of a pink china plate, their black currant eyes widely opened upon destiny.

AFTERWORD

It will be easily perceived by the intelligent reader that there really isn't any end to this story. The chronicler is forced to leave the problems of the Brewster parents unsolved in many details, while the Brewster children, in company with the present generation of young Americans, are still growing up;--growing up, it is devoutly to be hoped, into better men and women than their parents. Stronger physically, more alert mentally, of clearer vision; better fitted to carry the world's burdens and direct the world's activities. Unless the Brewsters accomplish this much for their children they have failed in the greatest thing given them to do; for it is not more wealth, better houses, finer raiment that the world is crying out for, but better, healthier and more inspired men and women. And, clearly, it rests with the fathers and mothers as to whether their children shall reach this higher level toward which humanity weakly struggles with tears and groans. Is love and brotherhood to rule in a world wherein all the finer qualities of mind and heart find room to grow and flourish? Or is humanity to go on its old, old weary way, hating and being hated; the strong trampling the weak under foot; the child often suffering from ignorance and injustice--even in its own home; and growing up to carry on the same false ideas.

There is much to be said on both sides of this question of child government, and the writer of this little tale does not even pretend to have said the last word. But let this much be remembered: "Spare the rod and spoil the child," was spoken in the days when polygamy and concubinage were the rule in the home. "Folly is bound up in the heart of the child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him," was the dictum of an age whose customs would not be tolerated in these days of higher civilisation and more illumined vision. The rack and the thumb-screw, the gag, the branding-iron and the scourge have passed; we shiver at the mere mention of the tortures inflicted upon human flesh in those past ages of darkness; yet "the rod of correction" is still tolerated--nay, even complacently advocated in our homes, though it has been routed from our schools. Isn't it out of date? Doesn't it belong in the museums with those ancient and rust-eaten instruments of torture?