Now, the thing for the Collinghams was to accept the situation with a great big generous heart. They were to open their arms to Bob, and back him loyally in the combination of difficulties he had to swing. But he himself must swing them. Junia laid emphasis on that. By direct action they couldn't intervene. They could only make it possible for him to act directly on his own responsibility. He had married a wife whose family was in trouble. They, the Collinghams, would not share that trouble, but they would help him to share it, since he had brought on himself the necessity for doing so.
To accomplish this, Junia suggested sending to Bob a cablegram covering the following five points. The Follett boy was in jail charged with murdering a detective; Bob should publish at once his marriage to this boy's sister; he should return to New York by the first convenient steamer; his father was placing ten thousand dollars to his account, and when that was used would place more; he was also ready, if instructed by Bob, to engage the best counsel in New Jersey to defend the boy.
"That will take care of everything till he gets here," Junia concluded, "and in the meantime, we can't do better, it seems to me, than go up, as we always do at this time of year, to our camp in the Adirondacks. This house can be kept open for Bob when he arrives, and Gull can stay with one of the motors to run him in and out of town."
"And what are we to do about the girl?"
"Nothing. That isn't for us to take up. We must leave it to Bob. If he ever brings her to us as his wife—But, then, he never may."
"What makes you think so?"
Her superb eyes covered him with their fine, audacious, womanly regard.
"I'd tell you, Bradley, if—if I didn't think there are things that had better not go into words, even between you and me. Whatever Bob discovers will be his own affair. You and I had best know as little as possible. We can back Bob up, and that's all we can do. Everything else he will have to work out for himself. By the time he's done that he'll be a grown-up man. It's possible he's needed something of the sort to develop him."
So Collingham telephoned his cablegram to Bob, and went to bed comforted. Next morning, on arriving at the bank, he found Junia's counsels supported by the best opinion among his co-workers. That is, he changed his mind as to going to the court in Ellenbrook for the first hearing of the Follett boy, or otherwise expressing himself toward the Follett family. He had given Bob the means of doing whatever needed to be done, and Bob had the cable at his disposition. To go to the court, or to express sympathy in any way, would, according to Bickley, be dangerous to discipline. Feeling in the bank was extremely hostile to young Follett, and it was better that it should remain so. The bank employee's cast of mind, so Bickley said, was, not revolutionary or rebellious against acknowledged rights. By sheer force of habit, it was schooled to reverence for life and property. The principle of ownership being holier to it than any tenet of religion, the Follett boy could not be looked upon otherwise than as an enemy of mankind; and this was as it should be.