Mrs. Lambert rose and went over to where her son sat, running her fingers through his hair as she had been wont to do when the little boy Phil was in trouble of any sort.

"I am very sorry, dear boy," she said. "It won't help to talk about it?"

"I am afraid not. Don't worry, Mums. It is just--well, it hurts a little just now that's all."

She kissed his forehead and went back to her chair. It hurt her to know her boy was being hurt, hurt her almost as much to know she could not help him, she must just let him close the door on his grief and bear it alone.

Yet she respected his reserve and loved him the better for it. Phil was like that always. He never cried out when he was hurt. She remembered how long ago the little boy Phil had come to her with a small finger just released from a slamming door that had crushed it unmercifully, the tears streaming down his cheeks but uttering no sound. She recalled another incident of years later, when the coach had been obliged to put some one else in Phil's place on the team the last minute because his sprained ankle had been bothering. She and Stuart had come on for the game. It had been a bitter disappointment to them all. To the boy it had been little short of a tragedy. But he had smiled bravely at her in spite of the trouble in his blue eyes. "Don't mind, Mums. It is all right," he had said steadily. "We've got to win. We can't risk my darned ankle's flopping. It's the bleachers for me. The game's the thing."

The game had always been the thing for Phil. Even in his blundering, willful boyhood he had played hard and played fair and taken defeat like a man when things had gone against him.

There was a moment's silence. Then Mrs. Lambert spoke again.

"Phil, I wish you would go to the dance with the girls. It will please them and be good for you. You can't shut yourself away from everything the way you are doing, if you are going to make Dunbury your home. Your father never has. He has always given himself freely to it, worked with it, played with it, made it a real part of himself. You mustn't start out by building a wall around yourself."

"Am I doing that, Mums?" Phil's voice was sober.

"I am afraid you are, Phil. It troubles your father. He was so disappointed when you wouldn't serve on the library committee. They were disappointed too. They didn't expect it of your father's son."

"I--I wasn't interested."

"No, you weren't interested. That was the trouble. You ought to have been. You have had your college training, the world of books has been thrown wide open for you. You come back here and aren't interested in seeing that others less fortunate get the right kind of books into their hands and heads. I don't want to preach, dear. But education isn't only a privilege. It is a responsibility."

"Maybe you are right, Mums. I didn't think of it that way. I just didn't want to bother. I was--well, I was thinking too much about myself I suppose."

"Youth is apt to. There were other things too. When they asked you to take charge of the Fourth of July pageant, to dig up Dunbury's past history and make it live for us again, your father and I both thought you would enjoy it. He was tremendously excited about it, full of ideas to help. But the project fell through because n.o.body would undertake the leadership. You were too busy. Every one was too busy."

"But, Mums, I was busy," Phil defended himself. "It is no end of a job to put things like that through properly."

"Most things worth doing are no end of a job. Your father would have taken it with all the rest he has on his hands and made a success of it.

But he was hurt by your high handed refusal to have anything to do with it and he let it go, though you know having Fourth of July community celebrations is one of his dearest hobbies--always has been since he used to fight so hard to get rid of the old, wretched noise, law breaking and rowdyism kind of village celebration you and the other young Dunbury vandals delighted in."

Phil flushed at that. The point went home. He remembered vividly his boyish self tearing reluctantly from Doctor Holiday's fireworks impelled by an unbearably guilty conscience to confess to Stuart Lambert that his own son had been a transgressor against the law. Boy as he was, he had gotten out of the interview with his father that night a glimpse into the ideal citizenship which Stuart Lambert preached and lived and worked for.

He had understood a little then. He understood better now having stood beside his father man to man.

"I am sorry, Mums. I would have done the thing if I'd known Dad wanted me to. Why didn't he say so?"

Mrs. Lambert smiled.

"Dad doesn't say much about what he wants. You will have to learn to keep your eyes open and find out for yourself. I did."

"Any more black marks on my score? I may as well eat the whole darned pie at once." Phil's smile was humorous but his eyes were troubled. It was a bit hard when you had been thinking you had played your part fairly creditably to discover you had been fumbling your cues wretchedly all along.

"Only one other thing. We were both immensely disappointed when you wouldn't take the scout-mastership they offered you. Father believes tremendously in the movement. He thinks it is going to be the making of the next generation of men. He would have liked you to be a Scoutmaster and when you wouldn't he went on the Scout Troop Committee himself though he really could not spare the time."

"I see," said Phil. "I guess I've been pretty blind. Funny part of it is I really wanted to take the Scoutmaster job but I thought Dad would think it took too much of my time. Anything more?" he asked.

"Not a thing. Haven't you had quite enough of a lecture for once?" his mother smiled back.

"I reckon I needed it. Thank you, Mums. I'll turn over a new leaf if it isn't too late. I'll go to the dance and I'll ask them if there is still a place for me on the library committee and I'll start a troop of Scouts myself--another bunch I've had my eyes on for some time."

"That will please Dad very much. It pleases me too. Boys are very dear to my heart. I wonder if you can guess why, Philip, my son?"

"I wish I'd been a better son, Mums. Some chaps never seem to cause their-mothers any worry or heart ache. I wasn't that kind. I am afraid I am not even yet."

"No son is, dear, unless there is something wrong with him or the mother.

Mothering means heart ache and worries, plus joy and pride and the joy and pride more than makes up for the rest. It has for me a hundred times over even when I had a rather bad little boy on my hands and now I have a man--a man I am glad and proud to call my son."

CHAPTER XVII

A WEDDING RING IT WAS HARD TO REMEMBER

It was a grilling hot August afternoon. The young Holidays were keeping cool as best they could out in the yard. Ruth lay in the canopied hammock against a background of a hedge of sweet peas, pink and white and lavender, looking rather like a dainty, frail little flower herself. Tony in cool white was seated on a scarlet Navajo blanket, leaning against the apple tree. Around her was a litter of magazines and an open box of bonbons. Ted was stretched at his ease on the gra.s.s, gazing skyward, a cigarette in his lips, enjoying well-earned rest after toil. Larry occupied the green garden bench in the lee, of the hammock. He was unsolaced either by candy or smoke and looked tired and not particularly happy. There were dark shadows under his gray eyes which betrayed that he was not getting the quota of sleep that healthy youth demands. His eyes were downcast now, apparently absorbed in contemplation of a belated dandelion at his feet.

"Ruth, why don't you come down to the dance with us tonight?" demanded Tony suddenly dropping her magazine. "You are well enough now and I know you would enjoy it. It is lovely down on the island where the pavilion is--all quiet and pine-woodsy. You needn't dance if you don't want to. You could just lie in the hammock and listen to the music and the water. We'd come and talk to you between dances so you wouldn't be lonesome. Do come."

"Oh, I couldn't." Ruth's voice was dismayed, her blue eyes filled with alarm at the suggestion.

"Why couldn't you?" persisted Tony. "You aren't going to just hide away forever are you? It is awfully foolish, isn't it, Larry?" she appealed to her brother.

He did not answer, but he did transfer his gaze from the dandelion to Ruth as if he were considering his sister's proposition.

"Sure, it's foolish," Ted replied for him, sitting up. "Come on down and dance the first foxtrot with me, sweetness. You'll like it. Honest you will, when you get started."

"Oh, I couldn't" reiterated Ruth.

"That is nonsense. Of course, you could," objected Tony. "It is just your notion, Ruthie. You have kept away from people so long you are scared.

But you would get over that in a minute and truly it would be lots better for you. Tell her it would, Larry. She is your patient."

"I don't know whether it would or not," returned Larry in his deliberate way, which occasionally exasperated the swift-minded, impulsive Tony.

"Then you are a rotten doctor," she flung back. "I know better than that myself and Uncle Phil agrees with me. I asked him."

"Ruth's my patient, as you reminded me a moment ago. She isn't Uncle Phil's." There was an unusual touchiness in the young doctor's voice. He was not professionally aggressive as a rule.

"Well, I wouldn't be a know-it-all, if she is," snapped Tony. "Maybe Uncle Phil knows a thing or two more than you do yet. And anyway you are only a man and I am a girl and I know that girls need people and fun and dancing. It isn't good for anybody to hide away by herself. I believe you are keeping Ruth away from everybody on purpose."

The hot weather and other things were setting Tony's nerves a bit on edge. She felt slightly belligerent and not precisely averse to picking a quarrel with her aggravatingly quiet brother, if he gave her half an opening.

Larry flushed and scowled at that and ordered her sharply not to talk nonsense. Whereupon Ted intervened.

"I'm all on your side, Tony. Of course it is bad for Ruth not to see anybody but us. Any fool would know that. Dancing may be the very thing for her anyhow. You can't tell till you try. Maybe when you are foxtrotting with me, goldilocks, you'll remember how it seemed to have some other chap's arm around you. It might be like laying a fuse."

"I'm glad you all know so much about my business," said Larry testily.

"You make me tired, both of you."