to you later on. But before you go, I want you to apologize to your Uncle Aaron for the danger you put him in this afternoon.”
Teddy turned toward his uncle, and the sour smile he saw on the latter’s thin lips made him almost hate his relative.
“Of course, I’m sorry,” he blurted out sullenly. “I told him so, down at the bridge. He knows well enough, that I didn’t mean – ”
“That will do now,” interrupted his father. “There’s no need of adding impudence to your other faults.”
Teddy took his hand from the back of the chair and started for the hall, after one despairing glance at the table.
“But, Father – ” ventured Fred.
“Wouldn’t it be enough to make him go without dessert?” interposed Mrs. Rushton. “Can’t you let him have at least a piece of bread and butter? The child’s health, you know – ”
“Well,” hesitated Mr. Rushton. But he caught sight of the sarcastic grin on Aaron’s face.
“No,” he went on more firmly, “he can’t have a thing. It won’t hurt his health to go without his supper for once. No, nothing at all!”
“Except what Agnes or Fred may slip to him later on,” put in Aaron, with a disagreeable smile.
“Mansfield’s wish is law in this house, and Fred would not go against his father’s will,” answered Mrs. Rushton, with a coldness that for a moment silenced her brother-in-law and wiped the smile from his face.
Old Martha, over in one corner, glowered with indignation.
“Cantankerous ole skinflint,” she muttered under her breath. “Dey ain’t never nuffin’ but trouble when dat man comes inter dis house. Sittin’ dere, stuffin’ hisself, while dat po’ lam’ upstairs is starvin’ ter def. I on’y hopes one of dem chicken bones sticks in his froat. It’d be do Lo’d’s own jedgment on ’im.”
But Martha’s wishes were not realized, and Aaron finished his supper without suffering from any visitation of Providence. In fact, he had seldom enjoyed a meal more. It was one of Martha’s best, and, to any one that knew that good woman’s ability in the culinary line, that meant a great deal. Then, too, Teddy, was in disgrace, and the discomfort he had suffered that afternoon was in a fair way to be atoned for. He was not by any means willing to let it rest at that, and he figured on putting another spoke in the wheel of that young man’s fortunes.
But, if Aaron had enjoyed his meal, nobody else had.
Mr. Rushton was wondering whether he had not been too severe. Mrs. Rushton, on the verge of tears, was sure he had. And Fred, who had been thinking all the time of poor Teddy, agreed with her.
That morning, their home had been one of the happiest in Oldtown. To-night, every inmate was thoroughly miserable, except their guest.
Why was it, Mrs. Rushton wondered, that trouble always came with Aaron? Never had he come except to her regret, and never had he left without a sigh of heartfelt relief on the part of every member of the family. He was a shadow on the hearth, a spectre at the feast.
He was not without good qualities, and plenty of them. In the community where he lived, he was highly respected. He was upright and square-dealing, and nobody could say that Aaron Rushton had ever wilfully done him a wrong.
But, though everybody esteemed him, there were few who really liked him. His was not a nature to inspire affection. He was too rigid and severe. The “milk of human kindness” had either been left out of his composition, or, at best, it had changed to buttermilk. Whenever one brushed against him, he was conscious of sharp edges. He was as full of quills as the “fretful porcupine,” and always ready to let them fly.
With young people especially, he had little sympathy. Although as far apart as the poles in many things, he and Jed Muggs were absolutely at one in this–their utter disapproval of boys.
Fred and Teddy had always felt in his presence that they ought to apologize for being alive.
But, if Aaron did not go so far as that, he at least resented the fact that they were so very much alive. Their noise offended him, and their pranks irritated him. Their boisterousness got on his nerves.
The bringing up of the boys had always been a bone of contention between Aaron and their parents. If their birth, in Aaron’s view, had been a misfortune, the way they were reared was nothing less than an outrage.
He never tired of storming at what he regarded as the lax and careless way in which the boys were allowed to do largely as they pleased. He magnified and distorted their boyish scrapes, until he had really convinced himself that they were headed straight for destruction, unless brought up with a round turn.
As a matter of fact, with all their faults, there were no finer boys in Oldtown.
Mr. and Mrs. Rushton, although conscious that they were perhaps a little too easy going, had always defended their methods good-naturedly. What especially irritated Aaron was their calm assumption that he did not know what he was talking about, because he had no children of his own, and their sly thrusts at the perfection of “bachelors’ children” made him “froth at the mouth.”
To-night, though, he had rather the advantage.
So he had been an old crank, had he? He hadn’t known what he was talking about! He had made too much of the boys’ little foibles! Well, what did they have to say now, now that through their younger son’s tomfoolishness, his pigheadedness, his criminal carelessness, his–there were so many good words that Aaron hardly knew which to choose, but lingered lovingly over them all–he had come within a hair’s breadth of causing his uncle’s death. Perhaps now they’d listen to his opinions with the respect they deserved.
The argument was with him for once, beyond a doubt. He had the whip hand, and he fairly reveled in his opportunity. In his heart, he was almost thankful to Teddy for having given him this advantage over the parents.
They, on their part, were sad and mostly silent. They had really been greatly shocked by the serious results that might have followed this latest prank of Teddy’s. They realized, however, the lack of malicious motive behind the act, and they knew that Aaron was failing to take this into account as much as he ought to have done.
They were at a disadvantage, too, from the fact that Aaron was their guest, and Mr. Rushton’s brother. If they defended Teddy too strongly, it would seem to be making light of Aaron’s danger and possible death.
So, with almost a clear field before him, their guest used his advantage to the full, and rumbled on to his heart’s content.
Mrs. Rushton, however, did what she could.
“You must admit, Aaron,” she ventured, “that Teddy might have lied about it, but didn’t. He didn’t let you think that somebody else had done it, but owned up, even before you asked him. Give him that much credit, anyway.”
“Ye-e-s,” admitted Aaron slowly. He was a truthful man himself, and respected the quality in others.
“Yes,” he repeated, “that was all right, as far as it went. But,” he went on, as though regretting his momentary weakness in making any concession to a criminal of the deepest dye, “what good would his telling the truth have done, if I’d been lying at the foot of the hill with a broken neck? Answer me that.”
As
