"Exactly. Besides, it's not a temper—just strong will."
"Sidney has WILL enough," mused Jean.
"Oh, all men have," said the doctor's wife contentedly. "Billy, now! He won't STAND a locked door. One night—I never shall forget!—the children locked themselves in the nursery, and Will simply burst the door in. Nobody makes a fuss or worries over THAT!"
If the illustration was beside the point, neither woman perceived it.
"There, you see!" said Jean, glad to be quite sure of conviction. "It never really worries me," she added, after a moment, "for Peter adores his father, and is only too eager to obey him. If Peter—and it's impossible!—ever DID really work himself up to disobedience, why, I suppose he'd get a thrashing,"—she made a wry face,—"and they'd love each other all the more for it."
"Of course they would," agreed the other cheerfully.
"There must have been some way in which Madam Carolan could have managed them," pursued Jean, thoughtfully. "The women of that generation were a poor-spirited lot, I imagine. One isn't quite a child!" There was another little pause in the hot murmuring silence of the garden, and then, with a sudden change of manner, she rose to her feet. "Mary! come and meet Sidney and the kiddy!" she commanded.
"Well, I rather hoped you were going to present them," said Mrs. Moore, rising too, and gathering up sunshade and gloves.
They threaded the silent garden paths again, passed the house, and crossed a neglected stable yard, where a great red motor-car had crushed a path for itself across dry grass and weeds. In the stable itself they found Sidney Carolan, the little Peter, and a couple of servants—the chauffeur with oily hands, and the wrinkled old Italian maid, very gay in scarlet gown and headdress.
Jean's husband had all the Carolan beauty and charm, and was his most gracious and radiant self to-day. His sunny cordiality gave Mary no chance to remember that she had a little feared the writer and critic. But, after the first moment, her eye was irresistibly drawn to the child.