Hedrick too impulsively felt of his ears and was but the worse stung to find them immaculate and the latter half of the indictment unjustified.
"Spoon!" he cried. "I wouldn't talk about spoons if I were you, Cora-lee! After what I saw in the library the other night, believe ME, you're the one of this family that better be careful how you `handle a spoon'!"
Cora had a moment of panic. She let the cup she was lifting drop noisily upon its saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth opening wide.
"Oh, no!" he went on, with a dreadful laugh. "I didn't hear you asking this Corliss to kiss you! Oh, no!"
At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd relief showed itself in Cora's expression. She recovered herself.
"You little liar!" she flashed, and, with a single quick look at her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.
"Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!" wailed Mrs. Madison. "And she told me you drove her from the table last night too, right before Miss Peirce!" Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately at this moment in the sick-room.
"I DID hear her ask him that," he insisted, sullenly.
"Don't you believe it?"
"Certainly not!"
Burning with outrage, he also left his meal unfinished and departed in high dignity. He passed through the kitchen, however, on his way out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness to the cook nothing except its own reward, went on his way with a bitter perception of the emptiness of the world and other places.
"Your father managed to talk more last night," said Mrs.
Madison pathetically to Laura. "He made me understand that he was fretting about how little we'd been able to give our children; so few advantages; it's always troubled him terribly.
But sometimes I wonder if we've done right: we've neither of us ever exercised any discipline. We just couldn't bear to. You see, not having any money, or the things money could buy, to give, I think we've instinctively tried to make up for it by indulgence in other ways, and perhaps it's been a bad thing.
Not," she added hastily, "not that you aren't all three the best children any mother and father ever had! HE said so. He said the only trouble was that our children were too good for us." She shook her head remorsefully throughout Laura's natural reply to this; was silent a while; then, as she rose, she said timidly, not looking at her daughter: "Of course Hedrick didn't mean to tell an outright lie. They were just talking, and perhaps he--perhaps he heard something that made him think what he DID. People are so often mistaken in what they hear, even when they're talking right to each other, and----"
"Isn't it more likely," said Laura, gravely, "that Cora was telling some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard that part of it, and thought she was speaking directly to Mr. Corliss?"
"Of course!" cried the mother with instant and buoyant relief; and when the three ladies convened, a little later, Cora (unquestioned) not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated in detail the story she had related to Mr. Corliss. Laura had been quick.
Hedrick passed a variegated morning among comrades. He obtained prestige as having a father like-to-die, but another boy turned up who had learned to chew tobacco. Then Hedrick was pronounced inferior to others in turning "cartwheels," but succeeded in a wrestling match for an apple, which he needed.
Later, he was chased empty-handed from the rear of an ice-wagon, but greatly admired for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the other boys rightly considered that what he said to the ice-man was much more horrible than what the ice-man said to him. The ice-man had a fair vocabulary, but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched a family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility as having produced even an ice-man, but curiously interesting zoologically.
He came home at noon with the flush of this victory new upon his brow. He felt equal to anything, and upon Cora's appearing at lunch with a blithe, bright air and a new arrangement of her hair, he opened a fresh campaign with ill-omened bravado.
"Ear-muffs in style for September, are they? he inquired in allusion to a symmetrical and becoming undulation upon each side of her head. "Too bad Ray Vilas can't come any more; he'd like those, I know he would."
Cora, who was talking jauntily to her mother, went on without heeding. She affected her enunciation at times with a slight lisp; spoke preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing the letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of artificial distinction and conscious elegance which never failed to produce in her brother the last stage of exasperation. She did this now.
Charming woman, that dear Mrs. Villard, she prattled. "I met her downtown this morning. Dear mamma, you should but have seen her delight when she saw ME. She was but just returned from Bar Harbor----"
"`Baw-hawbaw'!" Poor Hedrick was successfully infuriated immediately. "What in thunder is `Baw-hawbaw'? Mrs. Villawd!
Baw-hawbaw! Oh, maw!"
"She had no idea she should find ME in town, she said,"
Cora ran on, happily. "She came back early on account of the children having to be sent to school. She has such adorable children--beautiful, dimpled babes----"
"SLUSH! SLUSH! LUV-A-LY SLUSH!"
"--And her dear son, Egerton Villard, he's grown to be such a comely lad, and he has the most charming courtly manners: he helped his mother out of her carriage with all the air of a man of the world, and bowed to me as to a duchess. I think he might be a great influence for good if the dear Villards would but sometimes let him associate a little with our unfortunate Hedrick. Egerton Villard is really distingue; he has a beautiful head; and if he could be induced but to let Hedrick follow him about but a little----"
"I'll beat his beautiful head off for him if he but butts in on me but a little!" Hedrick promised earnestly. "Idiot!"
