"When people are kind to you—just what do you owe 'em? I didn't ask them to be kind to me—I mean the Robertsons—but, holy Peter!" said Johnny, "they've given me presents ever since I was a child. They even had a wild idea of getting me to take their name! I said, 'No, thank you!' Why should I take their name? . . . Mrs. Robertson always seems sort of critical of Aunty. Think of that! Course she never says anything; she'd better not! If she did I'd raise Cain. But I feel it," Johnny said, frowning. "Well, what I want to know is, what do you owe people who do you favors? Mind you, I don't want their favors!"
"Well," William ruminated, "I should say that we owe people who do us favors, the truth of how we feel about them. If the truth wouldn't be agreeable to them, don't accept the favors!"
"Well, the 'truth' is that I get mad when Mrs. Robertson looks down on Aunty! Think of what she's stood for me!" the boy said, suddenly very red in the face. "When I was fifteen one of the fellows told me I was—was her son. I rubbed his nose in the mud."
"Oh, that was how Mack got his broken nose, was it?" Doctor King inquired, much interested. "Well, I'm glad you did it. I guess it cured him of being one kind of a fool. There was a time when I wanted to rub one or two female noses in the mud. However, they are really not worth thinking of, Johnny."
"No," John agreed, "but anybody who looks cross-eyed in my presence at Aunt Lydia will get his head punched."
"Amen," said William King, and drew Jinny in at Miss Lydia's gate.
It cannot be said that William King's opinion as to what we owe people who do us favors was very illuminating to Johnny. "I like 'em—and I don't like 'em," he told Miss Lydia, with a bothered look. "But I wish to Heaven she'd let up on presents!"
On the whole he liked them more than he failed to like them; perhaps because they were, to a big, joyous, somewhat conceited youngster, rather pitiful in the way in which they seemed to hang upon him. He said as much once to his aunt Lydia; Mrs. Robertson had asked him to come to supper, but had not asked Miss Lydia. "I suppose I've got to go," he said, scowling, "but they needn't think I'd rather have supper with them than with you! I just go because I'm sorry for 'em."
"I am, too, Johnny," she said. She had ceased to be afraid of them by this time. Yet she might have been just a little afraid if she had known all that this special invitation involved. . . .
Mary Robertson no longer shared her longing for her son with her husband. She had not even told him of that day when her misery had welled up and overflowed in frantic words to Doctor Lavendar. But she had never resigned herself to reaping what she had sowed. She was still determined, somehow, to get possession of her boy. Occasionally she spoke of this determination to Doctor Lavendar, just because it was a relief to put it into words; but he never gave her much encouragement. He could only counsel a choice of two things: secrecy—and fortitude; or truth—and doubtful hope.