In the darkness Mr. Williams’ facial expression could not be seen, but his voice sounded hopeful.

“Is he—­is he still in a great deal of pain?”

“They say the crisis is past,” said Margaret, “but the doctor’s still up there.  He said it was the acutest case of indigestion he had ever treated in the whole course of his professional practice.”

“Of course I didn’t know what he’d do with the dollar,” said Robert.

She did not reply.

He began plaintively, “Margaret, you don’t——­”

“I’ve never seen papa and mamma so upset about anything,” she said, rather primly.

“You mean they’re upset about me?”

“We are all very much upset,” returned Margaret, more starch in her tone as she remembered not only Penrod’s sufferings but a duty she had vowed herself to perform.

“Margaret!  You don’t——­”

“Robert,” she said firmly and, also, with a rhetorical complexity which breeds a suspicion of pre-rehearsal—­“Robert, for the present I can only look at it in one way:  when you gave that money to Penrod you put into the hands of an unthinking little child a weapon which might be, and, indeed was, the means of his undoing.  Boys are not respon——­”

“But you saw me give him the dollar, and you didn’t——­”

“Robert!” she checked him with increasing severity.  “I am only a woman and not accustomed to thinking everything out on the spur of the moment; but I cannot change my mind.  Not now, at least.”

“And you think I’d better not come in to-night?”

“To-night!” she gasped.  “Not for weeks!  Papa would——­”

“But Margaret,” he urged plaintively, “how can you blame me for——­”

“I have not used the word ‘blame,’” she interrupted.  “But I must insist that for your carelessness to—­to wreak such havoc—­cannot fail to—­to lessen my confidence in your powers of judgment.  I cannot change my convictions in this matter—­not to-night—­and I cannot remain here another instant.  The poor child may need me.  Robert, good-night.”

With chill dignity she withdrew, entered the house, and returned to the sick-room, leaving the young man in outer darkness to brood upon his crime—­and upon Penrod.

That sincere invalid became convalescent upon the third day; and a week elapsed, then, before he found an opportunity to leave the house unaccompanied—­save by Duke.  But at last he set forth and approached the Jones neighbourhood in high spirits, pleasantly conscious of his pallor, hollow cheeks, and other perquisites of illness provocative of interest.

One thought troubled him a little because it gave him a sense of inferiority to a rival.  He believed, against his will, that Maurice Levy could have successfully eaten chocolate-creams, licorice sticks, lemon-drops, jaw-breakers, peanuts, waffles, lobster croquettes, sardines, cinnamon-drops, watermelon, pickles, popcorn, ice-cream and sausage with raspberry lemonade and cider.  Penrod had admitted to himself that Maurice could do it and afterward attend to business, or pleasure, without the slightest discomfort; and this was probably no more than a fair estimate of one of the great constitutions of all time.  As a digester, Maurice Levy would have disappointed a Borgia.