“Been a good boy?”
Jack looked wistfully at the governess, a young woman with black hair, a bad complexion and a disappointed face, that always suggested to Briggs a baffled motherliness. He pitied all people over twenty-five who were not married. He valued Miss Munroe, but he often told her that she had no business taking care of other people’s children; she ought to be taking care of her own.
“No, he hasn’t!” shouted Dorothy. “He broke his whip, and when Miss Munroe took it away from him he cried and kicked.”
“Oh—h—h!” said Jack’s father, reproachfully.
“Well, it was my whip,” Jack insisted.
“It’s all right,” Miss Munroe interrupted. “He said he was sorry.”
Briggs walked into the nursery with Jack on his shoulder. Jack, who at once forgot his momentary disgrace, clung to his father’s thick hair.
“Ow, you rascal, let go!” said Briggs. He sank slowly into a chair, and lifting the boy high in his arms, deposited him on his knee. Dorothy followed and climbed up on the other knee. She placed a forefinger between her teeth and looked admiringly at her father.
“Papa, is the President coming to-night?” she asked.
Douglas Briggs took her hand and drew the finger out of her mouth. “I’ve told you not to do that, dear,” he said.