“I shall hardly venture to complain to Mr. French about his servants,” said Deena.
“You might be good-natured,” he urged; “here’s the whole autumn gone without my getting any riding, and Mr. French would do anything you asked——”
“It is time for you to go to school,” said Deena, shortly.
“No, it isn’t; not for three minutes yet,” he contradicted. “‘Tenny rate, I don’t mean to be early this morning—it’s jography, and I don’t know my lesson; but I do think you might speak about the horse, Deena; I never get a bit of sport worth countin’”—this in a high, grumbling minor. “There was Ben; he had his automobile here the whole summer, and never offered it to me once! The fellows all think it was awfully mean—I had promised to take them out in it, and it made me feel deuced cheap, I can tell you. The idea of using a machine like that just to air a kid every day! I guess it pumped it full of wind, anyhow—that’s one comfort.”
“If you are going to say disagreeable things about the baby, I won’t listen to you,” said Deena, crossly, and then, ashamed of her petulance, added: “Run along to school, dear; the sooner you get some knowledge into that little red head of yours, the sooner you can have automobiles and horses of your own.”
“Those of my brothers-in-law will suit me just as well,” he said, favoring her with a horrid grimace, as he wiped his mouth on a rope of napkin held taut between his outstretched fists. “Perhaps I had better let Mr. French know myself what I expect in the future.”
“Perhaps you’ll mind your own business!” cried Deena, driven to fury.
He left the room singing in a quavering treble:
I’ll pray for you when on the stormy ocean
With love’s devotion. That’s what I’ll do.
It was a song with which a nursemaid of the Shelton children had been wont to rock the reigning baby to sleep, and had lurked in Dicky’s memory for many a year.