“Not a bit of either,” declared Leon, laughing, “I’m as lazy and happy as Mouse herself.”
“But it will never do to spend Thanksgiving evening in this quiet fashion,” said Mrs. Flemming, starting up. “We must have lights, so we can have some games.”
“Don’t do it for me,” protested Leon. “I’m having an uncommonly good time, now.”
“It isn’t for you, any more than for the rest of us,” answered Mrs. Flemming. “We play games, the doctor and I, almost every evening that we are at home. It keeps us from getting old and stupid; and then I’m a great believer in home games, anyway. If I had twenty boys, I’d keep open house for their friends, and play games with them all, whenever they felt like it.” And she went away to see about the lights, while Lieutenant Wilde drew the card-table up to the fire, and the doctor threw on fresh wood, preparatory to settling himself for his evening game.
It was not strange that, after three or four days spent in this pleasant home, Leon almost dreaded the return to the regular hours and discipline of Old Flemming. So heartily did the doctor and his wife unite in making the boy feel at ease, that he soon forgot he was a guest, and occupied much the position of a favorite son of the house; for the family life went on in its usual course, only widening its boundaries enough to take him well inside them, cordially welcome, yet free from all constraint. The doctor himself was enough to accomplish this, now entering into games with the zest of a boy, now reading aloud interesting scraps from his evening paper, now carrying off Leon for a long, quiet talk in the study that, somehow, lost much of its threatening aspect and became a mere cosy den, under these new conditions.
On Sunday night they were comfortably established there, alone, for Gyp was in bed and Lieutenant Wilde had gone to church with his aunt, when the doctor suddenly asked,—
“Did you know Winslow wasn’t coming back after the recess, Leon?”
“No.” And Leon roused himself from his book. “What’s that for?”
“Several reasons, none of them those that you need to know. I had a long talk with him before he went, however, and he finally admitted that he was as much in the wrong as you were, in your recent trouble with him. I thought it only right to tell you this, as long as you refused to bring any charges against him. But, after all, his fault doesn’t do away with your own, and it’s only fair that you should suffer the penalty for it. Next to deceit, my strictest rules are against fighting, for if all the boys were to settle their disputes in that way, good by to the discipline of the school, and then good by to the school itself. I know it puts a boy into a hard place when he is annoyed in such a way, for of course he doesn’t want to come to me with complaints. Still, I have made the rule, and I feel that I have the right to exact obedience from my boys. If they have the honor of the place at heart, they will see the reason for it. Isn’t it so, Leon?”
And Leon gave a hearty assent.