“Ring for Wotton, will you?”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“The truth.”
“Good Lord! Do you dare do that?”
“I don't dare not to. They'll find it out down-stairs quickly enough in their own way.”
“I see. You want to beat 'em to it.”
“Exactly.”
For years the American world had been discussing the duty of parents to teach their children the things they must inevitably learn in uglier and more perilous ways. There were editorials on it, stories, poems, novels, numberless volumes. It even reached the stage. Mrs. Dyckman had left her own children to find things out for themselves. It occurred to her that she should not make the same mistake with the eager servants who gave the walls ears and the keyholes eyes.
It was a ferocious test of her courage, but she knew that she would have all possible help from Wotton. He had not only been the head steward of the family ship in countless storms, but he had an inherited knowledge of the sufferings of homes. He had learned his profession as page to his father, who had been a butler and the son of a butler.
Wotton came in like a sweet old earl and waited while Mrs. Dyckman gathered strength to say as offhandedly as if she were merely announcing that Jim was arrested for murder: