It was there in the spacious veranda that Roy handed Mary the pin and told her exactly what Tom had asked him to say.
The chauffeur who saw Mr. Temple step into the touring car followed by Roy, carrying the golf sticks, was a little puzzled. He was still more puzzled to hear his master making inquiries about tracking. After they had gone a few hundred yards he was ordered to stop and then he saw Roy run back to the house and return with two more golf sticks which his master had forgotten.
If John Temple had had the least recollection of that scene in his own vacant lot in Bridgeboro, he might have recalled the prophetic words of Mr. Ellsworth, “by our fruits shall you know us, Mr. Temple.”
Doubtless, he had forgotten that incident. The tracking business, however, interested him; he was by no means convinced, but he was sufficiently persuaded to say the word which would free Tom. Roy’s assumption of full responsibility in regard to the golf sticks amused him, and Roy’s general behaviour pleased him more than he allowed Roy to know.
He had no particular interest in the scouts, but away down in the heart of John Temple was a wish for something which he could not procure with his check-book, and that was a son. A son like Roy would not be half bad. He rather liked the way the boy had sat on the coping and swung his legs.
[Chapter XV]
Lemonade and Olives
It fell out that on one of those fair August days there came out from Bridgeboro a picnic party of people who were forced to take their nature by the day, and following in the wake of these, as the peanutman follows the circus, there came that trusty rear-guard of all such festive migrations,—Slats Corbett, the “Two aces” (Jim and Jakie Mattenburg), two of the three O’Connor boys (the other one had mumps), and, yea, even Sweet Caporal himself.
The petrified mud of Bridgeboro was upon their clothes, the dust of it was in the corners of their unwashed eyes. They wore no badges but if they had these should have shown a leaden goat superimposed upon a tomato can, with a tobacco-label ribbon, so suggestive were they of street corners and vacant lots and ash heaps.
It was a singular freak of fate that the destiny of the carefullynurtured Connover Bennett should have been involved with this gallant crew.