There was a stir at the door. John Allan looked toward it. His wife stood there drying her eyes. He turned to the boy again.
"Go with your mother and get your supper," he commanded.
"I don't want it," was the reply.
"Well, go to bed then, and tomorrow afternoon you are to spend in your own room, where I hope meditation upon your idle ways may bring you to something like repentance."
The boy paused half-way to the door. "Tomorrow is the day I'm going swimming with the boys. You promised that I might go."
"Well, I take back the promise, that's all."
"Don't you think you've punished him enough for this time, John?" timidly asked his wife.
"No boy is ever punished enough until he is conquered," was the reply. "And Edgar is far from that!"
Mrs. Allan, with her arm about the little culprit's shoulder went with him to his room. How she wished that he would let her cuddle him in her lap and sing to him and tell him stories and then hear him his prayers at her knee and tuck him in bed as in the old days before he went to boarding-school! Her heart ached for him, though she had no notion of the bitterness, the rebellion, that were rankling in his. As she kissed him goodnight she whispered,
"You shall have your swim, in the river, tomorrow, Eddie darling; I'll see that you do."