“I—to blame?”
“I blame Dan Dreadnought.”
“I never approved of Captain Dauntless’ books,” she said. “It was a compromise.”
“Look up there, Mrs. Bennett—see that nest? Would you believe it, the boys got a photograph of the young birds in that nest and the old bird never knew it.”
They walked along, he swinging a stick whick he had broken from a tree. “There is no such man as Captain Dauntless, you know. Captains in the army have other work to do than to write stories for boys. Captain Dauntless is a myth.”
“It is so hard to know what boys should read,” she sighed.
“It is not as hard as it used to be. Remind me to give you a paper before you go. You see, if Connie had been a scout,—well now, let’s begin at the beginning. If he had been a scout he wouldn’t have read those books in the first place; they’re really not books at all, they’re infernal machines. Then if he had been a scout, of course, he wouldn’t have disobeyed you; he wouldn’t have sneaked off——”
Mrs. Bennett set her lips rather tight at that word, but she did not contest the point.
“If he had been a scout he wouldn’t have killed a robin—but if he had killed a robin, it would have been by skill and not by a silly, dangerous random shot—and he wouldn’t have been afraid of the presence of death or the sight of blood. If he had been a scout he could have determined unerringly the locality of sounds and human voices, and Charlie O’Connor wouldn’t——”
Mrs. Bennett winced.