“It’s more’n long past midnight!” he insisted.

“Huh! it ain’t only a quarter past seven,” put in his superior brother.  He seemed about to say more, but a glance from the grandfather silenced him.

So that was as late as he had stayed—­a quarter after seven?  He was ready now to rage at any taunt, and began to eat in haughty silence.  He was still eating when his grandfather and Allan left the table, and then he began to feel a little grateful that they had not noticed or asked annoying questions, or tried to be funny or anything.  Over a final dish of plum preserves and an imposing segment of marble cake he relented so far as to tell Clytie something of his adventures—­especially since she had said that the big hall-clock was very likely slow—­that it must surely be a lot later than a quarter past seven.  The circumstances had combined to produce a narrative not entirely perspicuous—­the two clear points being that They do everything in a whisper, and that Clytie ought to get rid of Penny at once, since he could not be depended upon at great moments.

As to ever sleeping under a tree, Clytie discouraged him.  She knew of some Boys that once sat under a tree which was struck by lightning, all being Killed save one, who had the rare good luck to be the son of a Presbyterian clergyman.  The little boy resolved next time to go beyond the trees to sleep; perhaps if he went far enough he would come to the other one of the Feet, and so have a safeguard against lightning, foreign cows, and Those that walk with rustlings and whisper in the lonely places at night.

The little boy fell asleep, half-persuaded again to virtue, because of its superior comforts.  The air about his head seemed full of ghostly “good business hands,” each with its accusing forefinger pointed at him for that he had not learned to write one as Ralph Overton did.

Down the hall in his study the old man was musing backward to the delicate, quiet girl with the old-fashioned aureole of curls, who would now and then toss them with a little gesture eloquent of possibilities for unrestraint when she felt the close-drawn rein of his authority.  Again he felt her rebellious little tugs, and the wrench of her final defiance when she did the awful thing.  He had been told by a plain speaker that her revolt was the fault of his severity.  And here was the flesh of her flesh—­was it in the same spirit of revolt against authority, a thousandfold magnified?  Might he not by according the boy a wise liberty save him in after years from some mad folly akin to his mother’s?

CHAPTER VI

THE GARDEN OF TRUTH AND THE PERFECT FATHER

It was a different summer from those that had gone before it.