w Mrs. Kenton perceived that she must not, and she had
her share of humiliation in the impression which his mother, as her
friend, apparently, was making with her children's acquaintances in the
hotel. If they would think everybody in Tuskingum was like her, it
would certainly be very unpleasant, but she would not quite own this
to herself, still less to a fourteen-year-old boy. "I think what your
father and I decide to be right will be sufficient excuse for you with
your friends."

"Does father know it?" Boyne asked, most unexpectedly.

Having no other answer ready, Mrs. Kenton said, "You had better go to
bed, my son."

"Well," he grumbled, as he left the room, "I don't know where all the
pride of the Kentons is gone to."

In his sense of fallen greatness he attempted to join Lottie in her
room, but she said, "Go away, nasty thing!" and Boyne was obliged to
seek his own room, where he occupied himself with a contrivance he was
inventing to enable you to close your door and turn off your gas by
a system of pulleys without leaving your bed, when you were tired of
reading.

Mrs. Kenton waited for her husband in much less comfort, and when he
came, and asked, restlessly, "Where are the children?" she first told
him that Lottie and Boyne were in their rooms before she could bring
herself to say that Ellen had gone to the theatre with Bittridge.

It was some relief to have him take it in the dull way he did, and to
say nothing worse than, "Did you think it was well to have her!"

"You may be sure I didn't want her to. But what would she have said if
I had refused to let her go? I can tell you it isn't an easy matter to
manage her in this business, and it's very easy for you to criticise,
without taking the responsibility."

"I'm not criticising," said Kenton. "I know you have acted for the
best."

"The children," said Mrs. Kenton, wishing to be justified further,
"think she ought to have had a chaperon. I didn't think of that; it
isn't the custom at home; but Lottie was very saucy about it, and I had
to send Boyne to bed. I don't think our children are very much comfort
to us."

"They are good children," Kenton said, said--provisionally.

"Yes, that is the worst of it. If they were bad, we wouldn't expect any
comfort from them. Ellen is about perfect. She's as near an angel as a
child can be, but she could hardly have given us more anxiety if she had
been the worst girl in the world."

"That's true," the fath