“That was very brave of you, Billy. But, seriously, Kirk, you shouldn’t hug him like that. Think what Aunt Lora would say!”
“Aunt Lora be——Bother Aunt Lora!”
“Well, I won’t give you away. If she heard, she would write a book about it. And she was just starting to come up when I was downstairs. We came in together. You had better fly while there’s time.”
It was sound advice, and Kirk took it.
It was not till some time later, going over the incident again in his mind, he realized how very lightly Ruth had treated what, if she really adhered to Mrs. Porter’s views on hygiene, should have been to her a dreadful discovery. The reflection was pleasant to him for a moment; it seemed to draw Ruth and himself closer together; then he saw the reverse side of it.
If Ruth did not really believe in this absurd hygienic nonsense, why had she permitted it to be practised upon the boy? There was only one answer, and it was the one which Kirk had already guessed at. She did it because it gave her more freedom, because it bored her to look after the child herself, because she was not the same Ruth he had left at the studio when he started with Hank Jardine for Colombia.
Chapter VI.
The Outcasts
Three months of his new life had gone by before Kirk awoke from the stupor which had gripped him as the result of the general upheaval of his world. Ever since his return from Colombia he had honestly been intending to resume his painting, and, attacking it this time in a business-like way, to try to mould himself into the semblance of an efficient artist.
His mind had been full of fine resolutions. He would engage a good teacher, some competent artist whom fortune had not treated well and who would be glad of the job—Washington Square and its neighbourhood were full of them—and settle down grimly, working regular hours, to recover lost ground.
But the rush of life, as lived on the upper avenue, had swept him away. He had been carried along on the rapids of dinners, parties, dances, theatres, luncheons, and the rest, and his great resolve had gone bobbing away from him on the current.