Raymond heard in silence my account of the doings on the Atlantic shore: only a wry twist of the mouth and a flare of the nostrils. But as the weeks went on, and still no Albert, his anger became articulate.
"I shall teach her that an agreement is an agreement," he declared. "She will never try this again."
Albert finally came home, three weeks late; his mother brought him herself. The governess transferred him from the hands of one parent to those of the other; and Raymond had asked my presence for that moment, as a sort of moral urge.
"Who knows," he asked, "what delay she may try for next?"
He gave one look at the picturesque, if not fantastic, toggery of his restored child.
"Did you ever see anything like that?" he said scornfully; and I foresaw a sacrificial bonfire—or its equivalent—with Albert presently clothed in sane autumn garb.
Albert was followed, within a week, by a letter from his mother. This was diffuse and circumlocutory, like the first. But its general sense was clear. If Raymond was thinking of putting Albert into a boarding-school....
"There she goes again!" exclaimed the exacerbated father. "A matter with which, by hard-and-fast agreement, she has absolutely nothing to do!"
However, if he was thinking of a boarding-school....
"A child barely seven!" cried Raymond. "Why, half of them will hardly consider one of eight!"