e!"

"If I could devote five busy minutes a day to him," grunted the Master,
"with an axe-handle or perhaps a bale-stick--"

"You wouldn't do it!" denied his wife. "You wouldn't harm him; any more
than Lad does. That's the trouble. If Cyril belonged to us, we could
punish him. Not with a--a balestick, of course. But he needs a good
wholesome spanking, more than anyone else I can think of. That or some
other kind of punishment that would make an impression on him. But what
can we do? He isn't ours--"

"Thank God!" interpolated the Master, piously.

"And we can't punish other people's child," she finished. "I don't know
what we CAN do. I wouldn't mind half so much about the other sneaky
things he does; if it wasn't for the way he treats Laddie. I--"

"Suppose we send Lad to the boarding kennels, at Ridgewood, till the
brat is gone?" suggested the Master. "I hate to do it. And the good old
chap will be blue with homesickness there. But at least he'll get kind
treatment. When he comes over to me and looks up into my eyes in that
terribly appealing way, after Cyril has done some rotten thing to
him,--well, I feel like a cur, not to be able to justify his faith that
I can make things all right for him. Yes, I think I'll send him to the
boarding kennels. And, if it weren't for leaving you alone to face
things here, I'd be tempted to hire a stall at the kennels for myself,
till the pest is gone."

The next day, came a ray of light in the bothered gloom. And the
question of the boarding kennels was dropped. The Mistress received a
letter from Cyril's mother. The European trip had been cut short, for
business reasons; and the two travelers expected to land in New York on
the following Friday.

"Who dares say Friday is an unlucky day?" chortled the Master in glee,
as his wife reached this stage of the letter.

"And," the Mistress read on, "we will come out to the Place, on the
noon train; and take darling Cyril away with us. I wish we could stay
longer with you; but Henry must be in Chicago on Saturday night. So we
must catch a late afternoon train back to town, and take the night
train West. Now, I--"

"Most letters are a bore," interpolated the Master. "Or else they're a
bother. But this one is a pure rapture. Read it more slowly, won't,
you, dear? I want to wallow in every blessed word of hope it contains.
Go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted. Read on. You'll never have such
another enthusiastic audience."

"And now,"