"But—I—you—he—they," began Miss Aurelia, her color glowing, her hysteria vanishing. She was fairly thrilled with flutters.
He stood over her, and shook a warning finger.
"You go to bed," he commanded sternly, "you go to bed."
With a sigh of relief, Miss Aurelia obeyed him. She led him first to the door of the Judge's study and Shipman stood watching her slender figure mount the stairs. Then he knocked. The "Come in" was snapped in the voice the Judge kept for his family, and Watts Shipman, with a shrug, entered.
Dunstan was standing on the hearth rug. The boy had rings under his eyes; his mouth was eager and breathless, as he had evidently felt the failure of some protest to his father.
"All I say is," concluded the Judge drily, "is that I want no more of this Colter rot. When your sister wants to go on expeditions similar to to-day, you accompany her!"
The lad stood there silent. The Judge recognized the famous lawyer with a curt gesture. "Sit down, sit down. I'm trying to make this young man understand that he is responsible for his sister's character and behavior; that they both live under one law, the law of a good name."
Dunstan's face was afire. He stood facing his father. "You call it a good name to suggest that my sister needs my protection?" asked the lad ironically. "Ah, a good name," the boy choked. "A name that means finicking and fussing and being afraid and continually thinking of evil. Well, I don't believe either Sard or I want that kind of good name."
He finished with a curious gesture of despair, a gesture that Shipman, standing soberly by, understood at once. He loved the young fellow for it, for it was Sard's own gesture. "Give us realities, realities of sympathy and help and cleanness and good will. Do not ask us to bow our heads under your standards of what appears well." That was what the gesture said.