"Your obedt servant,
"Richard Butler."
He folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, and handed it to Pen.
"You will deliver this to Miss Grey," he said, "on your arrival at school to-morrow morning. That is all to-night. You may retire."
Pen took the letter, thanked his grandfather, bade him good-night, turned and went out into the hall, and up-stairs to his room.
CHAPTER VI
It is little wonder that Pen passed a sleepless night, after the interview with his grandfather. He realized now, perhaps better than any one else, the seriousness of his offense. Knowing, so well as he did, Colonel Butler's reverence for all things patriotic, he did not wonder that he should be so deeply indignant. Pen, himself, felt that the least he could do, under the circumstances, was to publicly apologize for his conduct, bitter and humiliating as it would be to make such an apology. And he was willing to apologize to any one, to anything—save Alexander Sands. To this point of reparation he could not bring himself. This was the problem with which he struggled through the night hours. It was not a question, he told himself, over and over again, of whether he should leave Bannerhall, with its ease and luxury and choice traditions, and go to live on the little farm at Cobb's Corners. It was a question of whether he was willing to yield his self-respect and manhood to the point of humbling himself before Alexander Sands. It was not until he heard the clock in the hall strike three that he reached his decision.
And his decision was, to comply, in full, with his grandfather's demand—and remain at Bannerhall.
At the breakfast table the next morning Colonel Butler was still reticent and taciturn. He had passed an uncomfortable night and was in no mood for conversation. He did not refer, in any way, to the matters which had been discussed the evening before; and when Pen, with the letter in his pocket, started for school, the situation was entirely unchanged. But, somehow, in the freshness of the morning, under the cheerful rays of an unclouded sun, the task that had been set for Pen did not seem to him to be quite so difficult and repulsive as it had seemed the night before. He even deigned to whistle as he went down the path to the street. But he noticed, as he passed along through the business section of the town, that people whom he knew looked at him curiously, and that those who spoke to him did so with scant courtesy. Across the street, from the corner of his eye, he saw one man call another man's attention to him, and both men turned their heads, for a moment, to watch him. A little farther along he caught sight of Elmer Cuddeback, his bosom companion, a half block ahead, and he called out to him:
"Hey! Elmer, wait a minute!"