“Dombey knows,” said Ruth; “and it’s no wonder. She is so good and honest.”
“The wonder is that Mr. Schwarmer should have such a child,” said Ralph, “or Mrs. Schwarmer either from all we hear about her. What a pity that she should be dragged around the world against her will; but she ‘blames’ them and no doubt but they need her blame.”
“And Mr. Bombs, the man that’s been educated to amuse and mystify people. He needs her blame without the shadow of a doubt; and he will end by falling desperately in love with her,” said Ruth. “It came over me like a flash, when she was speaking of him.”
“Then it must be so,” laughed Ralph, “for you have a sample on hand. I hope she will marry him and put him to beneficent uses.”
When Ralph came home to tea he brought another item of news. Some kind of a building was going to be constructed on Schwarmer Hill; and no one as yet had been able to find out what it was to be.
“A Bombs’ mystification, perhaps,” sighed Ruth.
The library building went on very rapidly and by the time the cold weather set in, it was enclosed and ready for inside work. It gave evidence of being a plain, substantial, common sense structure, with nothing showy or monumental about it. Whether it was due to Ruth’s original suggestions, Ralph’s timely action, Lawyer Rattlinger’s shrewdness or President Hartling’s practical ability, was not known. The one thing that was known, however, and made sure of by every taxpayer in town was that it would not be saddled onto them for support. That it was to be an absolutely free gift. That there would be a liberal sum for books and a sufficient sum set aside to keep it in good running order.
The knowledge concerning the building on Schwarmer Hill was not so clear. In fact it was “extremely hazy,” as Lawyer Rattlinger expressed it. And yet there was no seeming of secrecy about the matter. The boss-workman as well as the architect and builders were remarkably unanimous in saying when questioned, that it was to be a sort of amphitheatre for sports and games of various kinds.
“That settles it, or rather unsettles it,” said the President, “for there are various kinds—a large number of them. They are very various and very brutal many of them. Yes, a great many of them all the way down from the Indian LaCrosse game and Fillipino Hurdle races to Jiu-Jitsu—the treacherous Japanese game of ankle and neck-breaking. Even the college sports must be pursued with the old time barbaric violence and virulence. If we send a son to college in these days to cultivate his mental powers, we may expect he will be swept into the rage for physical culture, and wind up by losing an eye or two fingers at the least.”
This was the President’s point of view very decidedly after having had a friend who cultivated his physical powers while in college to that extent; but he was ready to confess that he had not always held such a view. He recalled with regret a time when he had encouraged brutal games by inviting a party of tired young men and women to witness a football game.