"What you don't understand generally is bosh, isn't it, Sam?"
said Dr. Lavendar thoughtfully.
"I am a man of plain common sense, sir; I don't pretend to anything
but common sense."
"I know you don't, Samuel, I know you don't," Dr. Lavendar said sadly;
and the banker, mollified, accepted the apology.
"On top of everything else, he's been writing a drama. He told his
mother so. Writing a drama, instead of writing up his ledgers!"
"Of course, he ought not to neglect his work," Dr. Lavendar agreed;
"but play-writing isn't one of the seven deadly sins," "It is distasteful to me!" Sam senior said hotly; "most distasteful. I
told his mother to tell him so, but he goes on writing--so she says."
He sighed, and got up to put on his coat. "Well; I must go home. I
suppose he has been inflicting himself upon Mrs. Richie this evening.
If he stays late, I shall feel it my duty to speak plainly to him."
Dr. Lavendar gave him a hand with his coat. "Gently does it, Samuel,
gently does it!"
His senior warden shook his head. The sense of paternal helplessness,
felt more or less by all fathers of sons, was heavy upon him. He knew
in a bewildered way, that he did not speak the boy's language. And yet
he could not give up trying to communicate with him,--shouting at him,
so to speak, as one shouts at a foreigner when trying to make oneself
understood; for surely there must be some one word that would reach
Sam's mind, some one touch that would stir his heart! Yet when he
brought his perplexity to Dr. Lavendar, he was only told to hold his
tongue and keep his hands off. The senior warden said to himself,
miserably, that he was afraid Dr. Lavendar was getting old, "Well, I
mustn't bother you," he said; "as for Sam, I suppose he will go his
own gait! I don't know where he gets his stubbornness from. I myself
am the most reasonable man in the world. All I ever ask is to be
allowed to follow my own judgment. I asked his mother if obstinacy was
a characteristic of her family, and she assured me it was not.
Certainly Eliza herself has no will of her own. I don't think a good
woman ever has. And, as I say, I never insisted upon my own way in my
life--except, of course, in matters where I knew I was right."