"I—er—well, you see I got red-hot at the pater one day because he—you see I'd grown pretty fast and was as tall as he was, and—er—I balked; thought I was too big to be thrashed, as I deserved. Why, you know what I did as well as I do, Sam. I've always been ashamed of it, of course, and of the trouble I made my mother. She was and is the best mother ever, mild and sweet-tempered; but she couldn't handle me. Why, man, I was a holy terror, and my boy Rob is exactly like me." He spoke complacently, almost triumphantly. "I'll take it out of him, though. Watch me!"
"Then you don't think we could both learn a thing or two from Judge Lindsay and other specialists about the way to manage and bring up our boys?" persisted Sam, a slow twinkle dawning in his blue eyes. "We know it all—eh? and don't require any enlightenment?"
"I know enough to bring up my own boy, I should hope," responded Stanford, with heat. "If he cuts up the way I did, I'll take it out of his young hide some day; that's a sure proposition."
"And then possibly, since he's so much like his father, he might balk—when he gets tall enough—and he might not—come back in three days, the way you did. Pardon me, old man, for speaking so plainly; but as long as our children play together and go to school together, your business and mine are one when it comes to their training. And if half the rich men in the country can afford to spend most of their time and millions of their dollars in improving the horses, cattle, pigs and poultry of the country, you and I won't be exactly wasting our time if we discuss child improvement occasionally."
"That's where you're off, Brewster; the discipline of a man's own children is a strictly private and personal matter. You'll excuse me if I say just what I think, and that is that the methods I adopt with my boy are none of your or any man's business."
"And I'm obliged to differ with you there; the way you bring up your boy is not only my business but everybody's business. It concerns the neighbourhood, the state, the nation and the world."
"Now you're ranting, my boy, and I can't listen to you. But I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll tell Mrs. Stanford to get us both invitations to attend the next of her 'mother's meetings.' I'll go, if you will, and we'll hold forth on our respective ideas at length. How does that strike you?"
"As an eminently sensible and sane proposition," Sam said coolly, as he rose to leave the car. "A parent's club—eh? A capital idea; well worth working up. I'll see you later with regard to it."
Stanford grinned derisively as he buried himself in the pages of his newspaper. "Brewster's getting to be a bally crank," he told himself. Then his eye fastened upon a paragraph heading with a reminiscent thrill. "Boy of fifteen runs away from home in company with a neighbour's son, after a disagreement with his father!"
His rapid eye took in the details, meagre and commonplace, of the missing lads and their home-life.