"Oh Richard, Richard, what made you?" I cried, holding him so tight that he squirmed away. "Suppose the other end had been closed, and you had smothered in there, and mother had never found you?" for the ghastly possibility made my knees quake.
"Oh no, mother," he pleaded, taking my face between his grimy hands and looking straight in my eyes, "it wasn't a dark hole. I could see it light out 'way at the other end, and it didn't look so vely far as it was to crawl it. And after a little I'd have liked to back out, only—only, well, you see, I couldn't."
"Why not?" I asked, and, as he did not answer, I again saw a vision of two little forms wedged in the pipes.
"That why was 'cause I was in behind, and I wouldn't back, and so Dick couldn't," said Ian. "You see, Barbara, I really, truly had to be a mole and get very far away, not to stay, only just for fun, you know," he added, as he saw signs of tears in his brother's eyes, and began to feel the smarting in his own bruised knees.
One blessed thing about Ian, even though he is sometimes passionate and stubborn, and will probably have lots of trouble with himself by and by, there isn't a drop of sneaky cur blood in him, which is the only trait that need make a mother tremble.
What should I do, punish, or act as I longed to, coddle the boys and comfort the poor knees? True, I had not forbidden them to crawl through the sewer pipes, because the idea of their doing it had never occurred to me, so they could not be said to have exactly disobeyed; but, on the other hand, there was an unwritten law that they must not go off the place without my permission, and the torn stockings furnished a hint.
"Mother is going away for all day with grandfather," I said slowly, as I examined their knees. "Even though I never told you not to do it, if you had stopped to think, you would have known it was wrong to crawl through the pipes."
"But, Barbara," argued Ian, as we reached the porch, "it wasn't us that crawled, it was moles, and they just digs right ahead and turns up the ground and flowers and everything, and never thinks things, do they, grandpop?"
"Martha will take you in," I said, steadying my voice with difficulty, "and bathe your knees and let you rest a while before she dresses you again. Martha, please put away those stockings for me to mend when I return; I cannot ask Effie to darn such holes for two little moles; she is only engaged to sew for boys."
"But, mother, you don't like to sew stockings; it makes you tight in your chest. I heard you tell father so," objected Richard, while Ian's face quivered and reddened, and he pounded his fists together, saying to himself, "Barbara shall not sit in the house and mend moles' stockings. I won't let her," showing that they were both touched in a tender spot.