I had picked up the acrobatic Polydore and was going up the stairs two at a time. I gained our room, locked the door and proceeded to give the “poor little baby” all that was coming to him. Now and then above his howls, I heard Silvia’s plaintive protests outside the door, but I finished my job completely and satisfactorily, and laid the penitent Polydore in his little bed. Then I went out into the hall, feeling better than I had in months.
Silvia essayed to pass me, but I took her arm and led her to a recess in the hall.
“I am convinced,” I told her, “that we have Diogenes as a permanent pensioner on our hands, so it was up to me to show 193 him where to get off. You can’t go to him for a quarter of an hour.”
We went down stairs and I was sure I read suppressed regret in the faces of most of the guests at learning of the soft place in which Diogenes’ lot had been cast. Silvia tearfully told Rob and Beth of my cruelty.
“Do him good!” approved Rob heartily.
“How mean men are!” declared Beth indignantly. “I am going up and comfort the poor little thing.”
I held up the key to the room with a grin, and she had to content herself by making unkind remarks about me.