“I shall if I want to. You don’t own me, Lovering. Besides, study time’s up, anyway.”
Dick, disdaining to answer, set off to find Mrs. Townsend. The conference took place on a corner of the hotel veranda. Mrs. Townsend was a sweet-voiced, pretty woman, with a tired air. At first she seemed to resent Dick’s charge against her boy. Then she grew pathetic, and bewailed the fact of her husband’s death.
“If he had lived,” she sighed, “Harold would have been a different boy. I’ve never been able to do anything with him. He needs a stronger hand, I fear. Perhaps—that is, possibly—er—it would have been better to have found someone—someone a little older to take him in hand. Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that you haven’t done excellently, Mr. Lovering, for I’m quite sure you have; but, of course, as you are so little older than Harold, he may feel—er—you see what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes’m, but I don’t think that’s the trouble. Harold doesn’t want to study, doesn’t seem to see the necessity of learning and won’t. If I had full authority over him——”
“Oh, but you have! I thought that was understood.”
“Oh, for two hours, perhaps, Mrs. Townsend; but what I mean is that if I—well, if you’d just back me up, I’m sure I could accomplish something.”
“Please explain. I don’t think I understand.”
“Why, it’s like this,” replied Dick desperately: “He knows now that if he doesn’t want to learn his lessons he doesn’t have to. So he doesn’t do any work. If—if you’d make him understand that he does have to, Mrs. Townsend, that if he doesn’t he will be—punished——”
“Oh, but I’ve never punished Harold!” she protested. “I don’t believe in punishment; that is, other than verbal. A high-spirited boy such as he is—er——”
“Yes’m, I know, but you want him to go to Rifle Point, and he will never get there if he doesn’t take some interest in his lessons and do some work. See here, please.” Dick had provided himself with a Rifle Point School catalogue, and now he went over for Mrs. Townsend’s benefit the list of studies required for entrance. Mrs. Townsend listened with a puzzled, tired frown on her pretty forehead.