Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/75

Rh it concealed. "Salt dissolves 'em," she remarked to the retreating gentlemen. Boyd had not spoken a word. He felt somehow rather overridden. The Colonel did not seem to feel it. On the way to the team he commented cheerily on the various plants and trees and the cast-iron fountain of two children under an umbrella from the tip of which spouted the water. Only after the team was again under way did he revert to the subject of their hostess.

"A most remarkable woman," he repeated. "Great common sense; very firm."

"Has she a husband?" asked Boyd, with entire conviction that Mr. Stanley must long since have passed on. This proved to be the case.

"She has two children. Winchester is sixteen, and Dora about eighteen," the Colonel told him. "They have been brought up by an almost perfect regimen. They are very handsome, healthy, spirited children. Mrs. Stanley has been fully justified—up to now."

"Up to now?"

"Boyd, don't be a humbug! " admonished the Colonel cheerily. "You've been young, and you probably have an excellent memory. At the ages of sixteen and eighteen, would you have hated anything worse than being treated still as though you were twelve? And would you have wanted a more fascinating game to beat than that?"

"You think there's trouble coming in the Stanley family?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say trouble. Just a little shock, I hope. It may mean trouble, of course. I think Mrs. Stanley is making a mistake; but it is only because she doesn't realize they're grown up. Parents rarely do until something happens. There isn't any dividing line. They go on thinking them as they used to be. Then something happens. I've seen it so many times. Dora will stay out after hours at a dance; or Winchester will take a drink—some little thing that would be rather terrible in a child but nothing in a grown-up. Then everything will depend on how Mrs. Stanley takes it. Dangerous time, Boyd, dangerous time!"

He chirped to his horses; and continued: