"Of course you hadn't anybody if...."
"If my mother stole me. But you see she didn't. I was her son. I don't want to be anybody else's."
"Only—" she smiled faintly—"you can't always choose whose son you want to be."
"I can choose whose son I don't want to be. That's as far as I go."
"Oh, but still—" She dismissed what she was going to say so as not to drive him to decisions. "At any rate we know what to do about Tad, don't we? And you must work as well as I."
"I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he won't."
And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no later than that very afternoon.
He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy a hand with some work he was doing for his mid-years. On coming out again, a little scene before the main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows of the hall.
Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a touring car that had seen service. In spite of his residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy had called his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with the marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, insisting on being taken somewhere in the car. Spit Castle being on the spot as a witness to a refusal accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, Tad waxed into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew nothing of the cause of the breach, it was clear that a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made spurts at driving away. Before he could swing the wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses and maulings were exchanged without actual blows, when a shove from Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. Before he could recover himself to rush the car again its owner had got off.
There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well as some hoots from spectators who had viewed the scuffle from their windows. Tad's self-esteem was hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to do what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a good part of Westmorley Court.