"Young rascals!" he muttered, and passed on to the political situation in which he was deeply interested. Curiously enough, though, that paragraph concerning the runaway boys recurred to his mind more than once during the day, bringing with it an unwontedly poignant recollection of his own headlong flight and ignominious home-coming, foot-sore and hungry after three days of wretched wandering. He had never forgotten the experience and never would. It had done him a world of good, he had since declared stoutly. But he shivered at the thought of his own son alone and hungry in the streets of a great city.
XIX
Elizabeth was quite as busy as usual looking after the interests of her small kingdom when Evelyn Tripp called that same morning.
"I have come," she said, "to say good-bye." Then in answer to Elizabeth's look of surprised enquiry, "The Stanfords came home quite unexpectedly last evening, so I shall return to Dorchester this afternoon. Mother has already gone; I've just been to the train with her."
Elizabeth surveyed her friend dubiously. "Perhaps you are not altogether sorry on the whole," she said, "though the children have behaved surprisingly well—for them."
"The baby is a dear," agreed Miss Tripp warmly; "but I'm afraid I didn't succeed very well with Robert. It seems to me the child's finer feelings have been blunted someway. When I spoke seriously to him about his unkindness to Carroll the other day, he made up a face at me. 'You can't whip me,' he said, ''cause you aren't my mother.'
"'Indeed I could whip, or hurt you in some other way, if I chose,' I told him, 'and if you were a stupid little donkey who wouldn't go, or a dog who couldn't be made to obey, I should certainly feel like switching you; but you are a boy, and you are fast growing to be a man. I am afraid, though, that you are not growing to be a gentleman.'