Same thing at bottom. But perhaps even you won't approve
of his staying away all night? Smoking! Drinking! He'd been drunk. He
confessed it. And there was a woman in it. He confessed that. Said
they'd all 'gone to supper together.' Said that he was 'seeing the
world'--which a man ('_man_,' if you please!) of his years had a
right to do. Well; I suppose you'd have had me smile at him, and tuck
him up in bed to sleep off his headache, and give him a stick of
candy? That wasn't my way. I reproved him. I--chastised him. Perfectly
proper. Perhaps--unusual. He was twenty-four, and I laid him across my
knee, and--well; I got over it in fifteen minutes. I was, perhaps,
hasty My temper in those days was not what it is now. But I forgave
him in fifteen minutes; and he had gone! He's been gone--for thirty-
two years. My God!"
He poured out another finger of whiskey, but forgot to drink it. A
canary-bird chirped loudly, then lapsed into a sleepy twitter.
"I was well rid of him! To make a quarrel out of a thing like that--a
joke, as you might say. I laughed, myself, afterwards, at the thought
of it. A fellow of twenty-four--spanked! Why didn't he swear and be
done with it? I would have reproved him for his profanity, of course.
Profanity in young persons is a thing I will not tolerate; Simmons
will tell you so. But it would have cleared the air. If he had done
that, we'd have been laughing about it, now;--he and I, together.
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