“But suppose father doesn't send for me, Uncle George, what will I do then?”
“Well, he is your father, Harry.”
“And you think then I had better go home and have it out with him?”
St. George hesitated. He himself would have seen Rutter in Hades before he would have apologized to him. In fact his anger choked him so every time he thought of the brutal and disgraceful scene he had witnessed when the boy had been ordered from his home, that he could hardly get his breath. But then Kate was not his sweetheart, much as he loved her.
“I don't know, Harry. I am not his son,” he answered in an undecided way. Then something the boy's mother had said rose in his mind: “Didn't your mother say that your father's loneliness without you was having its effect?—and wasn't her advice to wait until he should send for you?”
“Yes—that was about it.”
“Well, your mother would know best. Put that question to her next time she comes in—I'm not competent to answer it. And now let us go to bed—you are tired out, and so am I.”
CHAPTER IX
Mysterious things are happening in Kennedy Square. Only the very wisest men know what it is all about—black Moses for one, who tramps the brick walks and makes short cuts through the dirt paths, carrying his tin buckets and shouting: “Po' ole Moses—po' ole fellah! O-Y-S-T-E-R-S! O-Y-STERS!” And Bobbins, the gardener, who raked up last year's autumn leaves and either burned them in piles or spread them on the flower-beds as winter blankets. And, of course, Mockburn, the night watchman: nothing ever happens in and around Kennedy Square that Mockburn doesn't know of. Many a time has he helped various unsteady gentlemen up the steps of their houses and stowed them carefully and noiselessly away inside, only to begin his rounds again, stopping at every corner to drone out his “All's we-l-l!” a welcome cry, no doubt, to the stowaways, but a totally unnecessary piece of information to the inhabitants, nothing worse than a tippler's tumble having happened in the forty years of the old watchman's service.