"But you ought not to have put it that way," Dr. Lavendar protested, "I merely put the fact," said Samuel Wright "Furthermore, unless he
stops dangling at her apron-strings, I shall stop his allowance, I
shall so inform him."
"You surely won't do such a foolish thing!"
"Would you have me sit still? Not put up a single barrier to keep him
in bounds?"
"Samuel, do you know what barriers mean to a colt?"
Mr. Wright made no response.
"They mean something to jump over."
"Possibly," said Mr. Wright with dignity, "you are, to some extent,
correct. But a man cannot permit his only son to run wild and
founder."
"Sam won't founder. But he may get a bad strain. You'd better look
out. He is his father's son."
"I do not know, sir, to what you refer."
"Oh, yes, you do," Dr. Lavendar assured him easily; "and you know that
no man can experience unforgiving anger, and not be crippled. You
didn't founder, Sam, but you gave yourself a mighty ugly wrench. Hey?
Isn't that so?"
The senior warden looked perfectly deaf; then he took up the tale
again.
"If he goes on in his folly he will only be unhappy, and deservedly
so. She will have nothing to do with him. In stopping him, I shall
only be keeping him from future unhappiness."
"Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar, "I never begrudge unhappiness to the
young."
But Mr., Wright was too absorbed in his own troubles to get any
comfort out of that.
"By the way," said Dr. Lavendar, "speaking of Mrs. Richie--do you
think she'd be a good person to take this little David Allison?"
"I don't know why she shouldn't be, sir," Samuel said. "I have no
fault to find with her. She pays her rent and goes to church. Yes; a
very good person to take the boy off your hands."
"The rent is important," Dr, Lavendar agreed nodding; "but going to
church doesn't prove anything."
"All good people go to church," the senior warden reproved him.
"But all people who go to church are not good," Dr. Lavendar said
dryly, "I am afraid she lets Sam talk poetry to her," Sam's father broke out.
"Stuff! absolute stuff! His mother sometimes tells me of it. Why," he
ended piteously, "half the time I can't understand what it's about;
it's just bosh!"