"Ah——" remarked Dunstan, with reverent aplomb. "I heard the kitchen door bang; she's back. 'Tis well; ring for hot muffins." With a curious glint of the brown eyes, Dunstan looked back into the cold gaze fixed upon him. But pure animal joy cannot long survive the mortal ice of the glacial human spirit. The dark eyes fell and the youth murmured thoughtfully, "and be hanged by the neck till you are dead".
Then the Judge rose and after they had heard the whine of his car swinging out of the drive, Sard and her brother looked at each other. Together they had noted the red eyes of the maid who, high-heeled of shoe and extravagant of dark hair, had replenished the muffins and brought back the coffee-urn.
"I don't envy you your job, Sard," Dunstan rose, went to the glass and settled his tie. "You were a gump not to go on with college and get a 'kayrear' like the other flappers. 'Father needs you'—poof! He needs nothing but that ice-box he calls himself. By heck!" Dunstan turned suddenly. "Do you know I believe it is sentencing people to death and the Can that makes him like that? It—it does something to him, don't you see?" But from his interest in the idea Dunstan went to concern for his sister. "Aunt Reely could run this joint. You go in for a career, Sard, and get out from under."
His sister laughed. "After all, he's the only father we've got, Dunce. Maybe after I've been around home a bit—it seemed dreadful when Father wanted me here not to come—for him to have nothing that belonged to him." Sard frowned a little. "Don't you think parents do an awful lot for us, and what do we do for them? Look at poor little mother. I used to visit for months at a time and leave her. She must have been lonely—she never said so—and then those two years at college and then—she went——" Sard's eyes widened with the sense of what those lonely months had been—of the companionship she herself had lost.
"Well," Dunstan loomed over her gloomily, "you'll turn into an old maid, a wall flower, a sort of solemn crow." He stood on his heels, hands in his pockets, surveying her. "It's all of a piece," he said fretfully. "You took down those bally chromos of Paw's and you got pretty chintz for the chairs and put around bright candles—and he hated it. You begged him to let you cut windows into the hall and he squashed you. You can't get sun and joy into this house, and you can't get sun and human warmth into that jellyfish." With a sudden squirm Dunstan struck a match. "Oh, he's so plaguy sure," he growled. "Law? law?—a lot of stuff in books brought down from the funny old bigwigs in England—all scared of their king; all hanging on to rotten things they called 'precedents' for fear somebody would get something away from them; charters, burning of witches, dungeons, strait-jackets, ducking-stools; Father belongs to those days! Well," the young fellow turned upon his sister fiercely, "they know no better, but you and I do know better. We belong to a different age, and we sit here comfortable and happy while our smug parent does for a young fellow, a young blood-and-bone man, full of grit and sap and dreams, a fellow that could sail a boat and cut down a tree! We send him to a filthy, smelly hell of a prison with a lot of awful men!" Dunstan stopped. "I went through State prison once, and the smell of it alone would rot a man's soul—keep him hating good forever—you realize it? A curly-headed fellow, a man younger than I!"
The girl sitting soberly behind the silver coffee-urn looked wistfully at her brother. Dunstan's brown face was long, and his ears just a trifle pointed like a faun's; his voice was young and crackling, like a tongue of young flame trying to push up through heaped-up brush. He smoked silently, staring down at his sister. "It's good-bye for him," he said slowly, "good-bye to green trees and swimming in the pools and climbing mountains and hearing a girl's voice. Oh! to just being a man! Good-bye forever to everything but smells and rats and the minds of decayed men and we—you, Sard, and my father are doing this thing."
Dunstan suddenly pushed back a chair. "Drat parents!" he said fiercely, "drat law, drat the system," then he laughed. "Aunt Reely, don't shudder; if a man on the stage talked that way, you'd think it was lovely. Did you see my tennis racket?" demanded Dunstan in his usual voice. "Oh, I guess I jammed it in the rack of the car. Well, so long; don't grieve for me if I don't turn up for lunch. I guess I'll mess with Prudy Anterp and her bunch."
Sard and her aunt watched the light reedy figure swing around the little footpath to the garage, and in a few minutes Dunstan's car had glided out of sight.