then stood quietly, checked by memory of the old revolt from awe.
He found Margaret in the library reading to the children from The Water Babies.
“Mr. Leonard says to ask you if I can go?” he said.
And her eyes were darkened wholly.
“Yes, you scamp. Go on,” she said. “Tell me, boy,” she coaxed, softly, “can’t you be a little bit better?”
“Yes’m,” he promised, easily. “I’ll try.” Say not the struggle naught availeth.
She smiled at his high mettled prancing nervousness.
“In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin’,” she said gently. “Get out of here.”
He bounded away from the nunnery of the chaste breast and quiet mind.
As he leaped down the stairs into the yard he heard Dirk Barnard’s lusty splashing bathtub solo. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song. Tyson Leonard, having raked into every slut’s corner of nature with a thin satisfied grin, emerged from the barn with a cap full of fresh eggs. A stammering cackle of protest followed him from angry hens who found too late that men betray. At the barnside, under the carriage shed, “Pap” Rheinhart tightened the bellyband of his saddled brown mare, swinging strongly into the saddle, and with a hard scramble of hoofs, came up the hill, wheeled in behind the house, and drew up by Eugene.
“Jump on,’Gene,” he invited, patting the mare’s broad rump. “I’ll take you home.”
Eugene looked up at him grinning.
“You’ll take me nowhere,” he said. “I couldn’t sit down for a week last time.”
“Pap” boomed with laughter.
“Why, pshaw, boy!” he said. “That was nothing but a gentle little dog-trot.”
“Dog-trot your granny,” said Eugene. “You tried to kill me.”
“Pap” Rheinhart turned his wry neck down on the boy with grave dry humor.
