XVIII

Perhaps because she had cried herself to sleep the night before, Doris

awakened late the next morning to find Carroll at her bedside completely

dressed and with the shining morning face which follows prolonged

scrubbing with soap and water.

"Has daddy gone?" she inquired anxiously, as she rubbed the dreams out

of her brown eyes.

"Not yet, sleepy-head," Carroll informed her; "but he's puttin' on his

overcoat this minute an' kissin' mother good-bye. I got up early," he

added complacently, "an' dressed myself all by my lone an' had my

breakfas' with daddy. I'm goin' to do it every mornin' after this. He

likes to have me."

Sam Brewster, in the act of bestowing a final hasty kiss upon his

Elizabeth's flushed cheek, was startled by the sight of a small figure

in white with a cloud of bright hair which flew down the stairs and into

his arms with a loud wail of protest.

"Kiss me good-bye, too, daddy! Kiss me!"

Sam caught the little warm, throbbing body and held it close. "Father's

baby daughter," he whispered, bending his head to her pink ear. "She

shall kiss her daddy good-bye."

"I'm goin' to be jus' as good to-day, daddy; I'm goin' to be gooder 'an

Carroll. 'N'--'n' I'll never, never bite anybody again; never in my

world. I promise!"

Sam gazed fondly down at the sparkling little face against his breast.

"That's daddy's good girl!" he exclaimed heartily. "Do you hear that,

mother?"

"Yes; I hear," Elizabeth said doubtfully. "I'm sure I hope Doris will

remember. Sometimes you forget so quickly, dear."

"We all do that, Betty," Sam said gravely, as he surrendered the child

to her mother.

His face was thoughtful as he hurried away down the street to catch his

car. To his surprise his friend Stanford swung himself aboard at the

next corner.

"Why, hello, Stanford," he looked up from a hurried perusal of his paper

to say. "I didn't know you were home. When did you come?"

"Last night," said the other, dropping into a seat beside his

neighbour. "The fact is, Marian couldn't stand it to be away from the

children another day. She was sure Rob would burn the house down with

everything in it, including the baby; or that some equally heartrending

thing would happen--it was a fresh one every day. It got on her nerves,

as she puts it; and finally on mine; so we gave up our trip to Santa

Barbara and came home literally post-haste. I was sorry, for I don't

know when we shall get another such chance. But you know how it is,

Brewster; a woman won't listen to rhyme or reason where her children are

concerned."

"I understand," Sam agreed briefly; "my wife is the same way. But of

course you found everything in good order--eh? Miss Tripp appeared to be

all devotion to the children, and my wife kept a motherly eye on them."

"Oh, everything was all right, of course; just as I told Marian it would

be: the children were in bed and asleep and everything about the place

in perfect trim. I'm sure we're a thousand times obliged to you and

Mrs. Brewster; Marian will tell you so. Er--by the way, our mutual

friend Hickey appeared to be calling upon Miss Tripp when we arrived,

and Marian insists that we interrupted some sort of important interview

by our untimely appearance. She said she felt it in the air. I laughed

at her. Of course I know as well as you do that Old Ironsides isn't

matrimonially inclined, and while Miss Tripp may be an excellent nurse

and housekeeper, she isn't exactly----"

"H'm!" commented Sam non-committally, "there's no accounting for tastes,

you know. Hickey's a queer chap; queer as Dick's hat-band; but a good

sort--an all-round, square good fellow."

"Sure! I believe you. But I had to laugh at my boy Robert. He's all

ears, and smarter than a steel trap. He overheard something of what my

wife was saying to me. 'Mr. Hickey doesn't come to see Miss Tripp,' he

puts in, as large as life; 'he comes to see me an' baby, 'specially me;

he comes most every day, an' he brings us candy an' oranges.' Isn't that

rather singular--eh?"

"Not at all," Sam assured him warmly; "Hickey is very fond of children,

always has been. He's always dropping in to see Carroll and Doris.

Um--did you see this account of Judge Lindsay's doings in his children's

court? I've come across a number of articles about his work lately.

Seems to me it's mighty suggestive, the way he's gone to work to make

good citizens out of material which would otherwise fill the state

prisons; and it's all done through some sort of moral suasion

apparently. He gets into sympathy with those poor little chaps; climbs

down to their level, somehow or other; sees things through their eyes;

gets their point of view, and then deals with them as man to man--or boy

to boy. I believe he's got the matter of discipline--all sorts of

discipline--cinched. We're going to try some of his methods with our

children."

Young Stanford stared for a moment at his neighbour, then he threw back

his head and chuckled.

"I beg your pardon, Brewster," he exclaimed; "but it struck me as

being--er--a decidedly original idea, that of establishing a children's

court in your own home. Perhaps it was Mrs. Brewster's notion; Marian

tells me she's very--er--advanced, when it comes to disciplining the

children."

Sam Brewster's blue eyes rested steadily upon his neighbour.

"Singular as the statement may sound, I'm prepared to say that I'm

somewhat interested in my children's upbringing on my own account," he

said coolly. "My wife has notions, as you call them, and one of them is

that a father has quite as much responsibility in the training of the

children as the mother. I believe she's right."

"Well, I can't see it that way," drawled Stanford. "I'm perfectly

willing to leave the kids to Marian while they're small; when they're

too big for her to handle I'll take 'em in hand. They'll obey _me_,

you'd better believe, from the word go. I think as my father did, that a

child ought to mind as though he were fired out of a gun."

"It seems to me a child is a reasonable being, and has a reasoning

being's right to understand something of the whys and wherefores of his

obedience," protested Sam, vaguely aware that he was quoting the

opinions of someone else. "Besides that, don't they tell us a child's

character is pretty well formed by the time he is seven?"

"Bosh!" exploded Stanford. "I wouldn't give a brass nickel for all the

theories you can bundle together. There were no sort of explanations or

mollycoddling coming to me, when I was a kid. It was 'do this, sir'; or

'don't do the other.' I can tell you, I walked a chalk-line till I was

sixteen. Why, gracious! if I'd attempted to argue and talk back to my

governor the way your boy talks to you--you needn't deny it, for I've

heard him myself--I'd have stood up to eat for a week. I've done it more

than once for simply looking cross-eyed, and I can tell you it did me

good."

Sam Brewster eyed his companion with grave interest; there was no

animosity in his tone and merely a friendly interest in his face as he

inquired:

"You walked a chalk-line till you were sixteen, you say; what did you do

then?"

Young Stanford's handsome dark face reddened slightly.

"I--er--well, you see I got red-hot at the pater one day because he--you

see I'd grown pretty fast and was as tall as he was, and--er--I balked;

thought I was too big to be thrashed, as I deserved. Why, you know what

I did as well as I do, Sam. I've always been ashamed of it, of course,

and of the trouble I made my mother. She was and is the best mother

ever, mild and sweet-tempered; but she couldn't handle _me_. Why, man, I

was a holy terror, and my boy Rob is exactly like me." He spoke

complacently, almost triumphantly. "I'll take it out of him, though.

Watch me!"

"Then you don't think we could both learn a thing or two from Judge

Lindsay and other specialists about the way to manage and bring up our

boys?" persisted Sam, a slow twinkle dawning in his blue eyes. "We know

it all--eh? and don't require any enlightenment?"

"I know enough to bring up my own boy, I should hope," responded

Stanford, with heat. "If he cuts up the way I did, I'll take it out of

his young hide some day; that's a sure proposition."

"And then possibly, since he's so much like his father, he might

balk--when he gets tall enough--and he might not--come back in three

days, the way you did. Pardon me, old man, for speaking so plainly; but

as long as our children play together and go to school together, your

business and mine are one when it comes to their training. And if half

the rich men in the country can afford to spend most of their time and

millions of their dollars in improving the horses, cattle, pigs and

poultry of the country, you and I won't be exactly wasting our time if

we discuss child improvement occasionally."

"That's where you're off, Brewster; the discipline of a man's own

children is a strictly private and personal matter. You'll excuse me if

I say just what I think, and that is that the methods I adopt with my

boy are none of your or any man's business."

"And I'm obliged to differ with you there; the way you bring up your boy

is not only my business but everybody's business. It concerns the

neighbourhood, the state, the nation and the world."

"Now you're ranting, my boy, and I can't listen to you. But I'll tell

you what I'll do; I'll tell Mrs. Stanford to get us both invitations to

attend the next of her 'mother's meetings.' I'll go, if you will, and

we'll hold forth on our respective ideas at length. How does that

strike you?"

"As an eminently sensible and sane proposition," Sam said coolly, as he

rose to leave the car. "A parent's club--eh? A capital idea; well worth

working up. I'll see you later with regard to it."

Stanford grinned derisively as he buried himself in the pages of his

newspaper. "Brewster's getting to be a bally crank," he told himself.

Then his eye fastened upon a paragraph heading with a reminiscent

thrill. "Boy of fifteen runs away from home in company with a

neighbour's son, after a disagreement with his father!"

His rapid eye took in the details, meagre and commonplace, of the

missing lads and their home-life.

"Young rascals!" he muttered, and passed on to the political situation

in which he was deeply interested. Curiously enough, though, that

paragraph concerning the runaway boys recurred to his mind more than

once during the day, bringing with it an unwontedly poignant

recollection of his own headlong flight and ignominious home-coming,

foot-sore and hungry after three days of wretched wandering. He had

never forgotten the experience and never would. It had done him a world

of good, he had since declared stoutly. But he shivered at the thought

of his own son alone and hungry in the streets of a great city.