Mr. Carter waved the remark aside as irrelevant.
"That has nothing to do with the point. The question which I am discussing is the fact that you painted my son with axle grease. I am not only shocked, but astonished. I have always entertained the highest opinion of your sense of propriety and fitness. I should have believed this story a pure fabrication on the part of an unprincipled reporter, had I not heard it corroborated from Master Bobby's own lips. Before passing judgment it is only right that I hear your version of the affair. What have you to say?"
Peter shifted his weight uneasily. An invitation to tell a story rarely found him wanting, but he liked to feel that his audience was with him, and in the present instance Mr. Carter's manner was not surcharged with sympathy.
"Well, sir," he began, with an apologetic cough, "If ye'll excuse me mentionin' it, them three Brainard boys is young limbs o' Satan, every one o' them. Their badness, so to speak, is catchin', an' Master Bobby's got it. 'Tis demoralizin', sir, to have them about; I'm losin' me own sense o' right an' wrong."
"Very well," said Mr. Carter, impatiently, "what I want to hear about is this Indian business."
"Yes, sir, I'm comin' to it, sir. Yesterday mornin' I got an order early to drive Mrs. Carter to the country club, an' when I went into the carriage-house to see about hitchin' up, what should I find but them four little div——"
Peter caught Mr. Carter's eye, and hastily altered his sentence.
"I found the four young gentlemen, sir, dressed in stri-ped bathin' trunks, engaged in paintin' their skins with axle grease ready for the war-path. They'd got two cans on before I seen 'em, and all I done was Master Bobby's back an' Master Wallace's legs. I mistrusted it wouldn't come off, sir, and I told 'em as much; but they was already so nearly covered that it seemed a pity to spoil the sport. Ye see, I was mindin' what their mother said about takin' a sympathetic interest in their innocint divarsions."
"And this struck you as an innocent diversion?"
"Comparatively speakin', sir. None o' their divarsions strikes me as fittin' for a Sunday-school."