“Hedrick! I should like to see you!” Hedrick rose, and, looking neither to the right nor, to the left, went stonily into the house, and appeared before the powers.
“Call me?” he inquired with the air of cheerful readiness to proceed upon any errand, no matter how difficult.
Mr. Madison countered diplomacy with gloom.
“I don’t know what to do with you. Why can’t you let your sister alone?”
“Has Laura been complaining of me?”
“Oh, Hedrick!” said Mrs. Madison.
Hedrick himself felt the justice of her reproof: his reference to Laura was poor work, he knew. He hung his head and began to scrape the carpet with the side of his shoe.
“Well, what’d Cora say I been doing to her?”
“You know perfectly well what you’ve been doing,” said Mr. Madison sharply.
“Nothing at all; just sitting on the steps. What’d she say?”