“I’ll send you home every night at ten, and mind you go to bed,” said Roger, calmly. “Five hours’ sleep is not enough for a boy of eighteen. Get up in the morning and go to the bank. As soon as it closes in the afternoon I’ll have business in Cloverdale that will take you on a drive there.”
“You’re a daisy, Roger,” said Bonny, in a low voice.
Roger cast down his eyes. That flushed, disturbed face reminded him of his own beautiful Margaretta. Pray Heaven, he would never see such trouble and dissatisfaction in her blue eyes.
Bonny had already thrown himself into a deep leather-covered armchair, and was apparently absorbed in the magazine. Presently he looked up. “Roger, don’t you tell the girls what I’ve been saying.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Nor Grandma.”
“No, nor Grandma.”
But Grandma knew. There was no hoodwinking that dear, shrewd old lady, and when next she met Roger, which was the following morning, as he was on his way to his office, and she was on her way to call on his wife, her deep-set eyes glistened strangely, and instead of saying “Good morning, dear grandson-in-law,” as she usually did, she said “Good morning, dear son.” She considered him as much one of the family as her three beloved orphan grandchildren.
Yes, Grandma knew, and Grandma approved of what he was doing for her poor, wilful, troubled Bonny.
Every evening for five evenings the lad came to the iron works, and steadfastly set his young face to the sober, unexciting examination of dull rows of figures, stretching indefinitely across white pages.