arrested. I'll bet he wouldn't have got off so easily with the
magistrate, either! But I suppose you'll all let him come bowing and
smiling round in the morning, like butter wouldn't melt in your mouths.
That seems to be the Kenton way. Anybody can pull our noses, or get us
arrested that wants to, and we never squeak." She went on a long time
to this purpose, Mrs. Kenton listening with an air almost of conviction,
and Ellen patiently bearing it as a right that Lottie had in a matter
where she had been otherwise ignored.

The judge broke out, not upon Lottie, but upon his wife. "Good heavens,
Sarah, can't you make the child hush?"

Lottie answered for her mother, with a crash of nerves and a gush of
furious tears: "Oh, I've got to hush, I suppose. It's always the way
when I'm trying to keep up the dignity of the family. I suppose it will
be cabled to America, and by tomorrow it will be all over Tuskingum how
Boyne was made a fool of and got arrested. But I bet there's one person
in Tuskingum that won't have any remarks to make, and that's Bittridge.
Not, as long as Dick's there he won't."

"Lottie!" cried her mother, and her father started towards her, while
Ellen still sat patiently quiet.

"Oh, well!" Lottie submitted. "But if Dick was here I know this Trannel
wouldn't get off so smoothly. Dick would give him a worse cowhiding than
he did Bittridge."

Half the last word was lost in the bang of the door which Lottie slammed
behind her, leaving her father and mother to a silence which Ellen did
not offer to break. The judge had no heart to speak, in his dismay, and
it was Mrs. Kenton who took the word.

"Ellen," she began, with compassionate gentleness, "we tried to keep it
from you. We knew how you would feel. But now we have got to tell you.
Dick did cowhide him when he got back to Tuskingum. Lottie wrote out to
Dick about it, how Mr. Bittridge had behaved in New York. Your father
and I didn't approve of it, and Dick didn't afterwards; but, yes, he did
do it."

"I knew it, momma," said Ellen, sadly.

"You knew it! How?"

"That other letter I got when we first came--it was from his mother."

"Did she tell--"

"Yes. It was terrible she seemed to feel so. And I was sorry for her. I
thought I ought to answer it, and I did. I told her I was sorry, too.
I tried not to blame Richard. I don't believe I did. And I tried not to
blame him. She was feeling badly enough without that."

Her father and mother looked a