“Well, I told you not to bring me, didn’t I?” responded Robert. His voice was loud and cheery, and had, in his more gleeful moments, a trick of breaking into a high register with a joyous inflection which endeared him to those who enjoyed his conversation. He was clean, gay, and young; but if he possessed any beauty it was of the mind; and among his acquaintance there was a wide difference of opinion on this point.
While his mother voiced her dignified rebuke, his quick eye glanced along the stage to take in its possibilities.
Rosalie was shrunk into the further corner of her seat, directly behind the Nixon party, and Miss Hickey, meeting his glance, chewed vigorously while lifting her head with an elegant air of impersonality.
In Robert’s own mental vernacular he “passed up the gum.”
The driver’s seat was full, the alternative was the one in front of his mother’s party, where Betsy Foster reigned alone. He stepped in beside her while he spoke to his mother.
“I told you not to bring me,” he declared again, cheerfully. “I told you I’d be more trouble than I was worth.”
“You actually detained the stage, dear. I was about to send your uncle Henry to find you.”
Quick as a flash the culprit snatched the device which aided the deaf gentleman’s hearing, and shrieked across it above the clatter of the stage.
“Don’t you ever do it, Uncle Henry. Rise up and declare your rights. What if I am lost?”
“That’s what I say,” responded the older man, equably. “Small loss. One of my rights is not to have my ear-drums cracked. They’re sufficiently nicked already.”