Wild Wings. Margaret Piper Chalmers

the children as I would myself or better. Keep your eye on Ted especially. His heart is in the right place, but he has a reckless devil in him that will bring him and all of us to grief if it isn't laid."

      Doctor Holiday went over and laid a hand on each of the lad's hunched shoulders.

      "Look at me, Ted," he commanded gently.

      The old habit of obedience strong in spite of his twenty years, Ted raised his eyes, but dropped them again on the instant as if they were lead weighted.

      "That is the first time you ever lied to me, I think, lad," said the doctor quietly.

      A quiver passed over the boy's face, but his lips set tighter than ever and he pulled away from his uncle's hands and turned, staring out of the window at a rather dusty and bedraggled looking hydrangea on the lawn.

      "I wonder if it was necessary," the quiet voice continued. "I haven't the slightest wish to be hard on you. I just want to understand. You know that, son, don't you?"

      The boy's head went up at that. His gaze deserted the hydrangea, for the first time that day, met his uncle's, squarely if somewhat miserably.

      "It isn't that, Uncle Phil. You have every right to come down on me. I hadn't any business to have the car out at all, much less take fool chances with it. But honestly I have told you all—all I can tell. I did lie to you just now. I wasn't alone. There was a—a girl with me."

      Ted's face was hot again as he made the confession.

      "I see," mused the doctor. "Was she hurt?"

      "No—that is—not much. She hurt her shoulder some and cut her head a bit." The details came out reluctantly as if impelled by the doctor's steady eyes. "She telephoned me today she was all right. It's a miracle we weren't both killed though. We might have been as easy as anything. You said just now nothing you could say would make me have sense about speeding. I guess what happened last night ought to knock sense into me if anything could. I say, Uncle Phil—"

      "Well?" as the boy paused obviously embarrassed.

      "If you don't mind I'd rather not say anything more about the girl.

       She—I guess she'd rather I wouldn't," he wound up confusedly.

      "Very well. That is your affair and hers. Thank you for coming halfway to meet me. It made it easier all around."

      The doctor held out his hand and the boy took it eagerly.

      "You are great to me, Uncle Phil—lots better than I deserve. Please don't think I don't see that. And truly I am awfully ashamed of smashing the car, and not telling you, as I ought to have this morning, and spoiling Tony's fun and—and everything." Ted swallowed something down hard as if the "everything" included a good deal. "I don't see why I have to be always getting into scrapes. Can't seem to help it, somehow. Guess I was made that way, just as Larry was born steady."

      "That is a spineless jellyfish point of view, Ted. Don't fool yourself with it. There is no earthly reason why you should keep drifting from one escapade to another. Get some backbone into you, son."

      Ted's face clouded again at that, though he wasn't sulky this time. He was remembering some other disagreeable confessions he had to make before long. He knew this was a good opening for them, but somehow he could not drive himself to follow it up. He could only digest a limited amount of humble pie at a time and had already swallowed nearly all he could stand. Still he skirted warily along the edge of the dilemma.

      "I suppose you think I made an awful ass of myself at college this year," he averred gloomily.

      "I don't think it. I know it." The doctor's eyes twinkled a little. Then he grew sober. "Why do you, Ted? You aren't really an ass, you know. If you were, there might be some excuse for behaving like one."

      Ted flushed.

      "That's what Larry told me last spring when he was pitching into me about—well about something. I don't know why I do, Uncle Phil, honest I don't. Maybe it is because I hate college so and all the stale old stuff they try to cram down our throats. I get so mad and sick and disgusted with the whole thing that I feel as if I had to do something to offset it—something that is real and live, even if it isn't according to rules and regulations. I hate rules and regulations. I'm not a mummy and I don't want to be made to act as if I were. I'll be a long time dead and I want to get a whole lot of fun out of life first. I hate studying. I want to do things, Uncle Phil—"

      "Well?"

      "I don't want to go back to college."

      "What do you want to do?"

      "Join the Canadian forces. It makes me sick to have a war going on and me not in it. Dad quit college for West Point and everybody thought it was all right. I don't see why I shouldn't get into it. I wouldn't fall down on that. I promise you. I'd make you proud of me instead of ashamed the way you are now." The boy's voice and eyes were unusually earnest.

      His uncle did not answer instantly. He knew that there was some truth in his nephew's analysis of the situation. It was his uneasy, superabundant energy and craving for action that made him find the more or less restricted life of the college, a burden, a bore and an exasperation, and drove him to crazy escapades and deeds of flagrant lawlessness. He needed no assurance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other considerations which to him seemed paramount for the time at least.

      "I understand how you feel, Ted," he said at last. "If we get into the war ourselves I won't say a word against your going. I should expect you to go. We all would. But in the meantime as I see it you are not quite a free agent. Granny is old and very, very feeble. She hasn't gotten over your father's death. She grieves over it still. If you went to war I think it would kill her. She couldn't bear the strain and anxiety. Patience, laddie. You don't want to hurt her, do you?"

      "I s'pose not," said Ted a little grudgingly. "Then it is no,

       Uncle Phil?"

      "I think it ought to be no of your own will for Granny's sake. We don't live to ourselves alone in this world. We can't. But aside from Granny I am not at all certain I should approve of your leaving college just because it doesn't happen to be exciting enough to meet your fancy and means work you are too lazy and irresponsible to settle down to doing. Looks a little like quitting to me and Holidays aren't usually quitters, you know."

      He smiled at the boy but Ted did not smile back. The thrust about

       Holidays and quitters went home.

      "I suppose it has got to be college again if you say so," he said soberly after a minute. "Thank heaven there are three months ahead clear though first."

      "To play in?"

      "Well, yes. Why not? It is all right to play in vacation, isn't it?" the boy retorted, a shade aggressively.

      "Possibly if you have earned the vacation by working beforehand."

      Ted's eyes fell at that. This was dangerously near the ground of those uncomfortable, inevitable confessions which he meant to put off as long as possible.

      "Do you mind if I go out now?" he asked with unusual meekness after a moment's rather awkward silence.

      "No, indeed. Go ahead. I've had my say. Be back for supper with us?"

      "Dunno." And Ted disappeared into the adjoining room which connected with his uncle's. In a moment he was back, expensive panama hat in one hand and a lighted cigarette held jauntily in the other. "I meant to tell you you could take the car repairs out of my allowance," he remarked casually but with his eye shrewdly on his guardian as he made the announcement.

      "Very well," replied the latter quietly. Then he smiled a little seeing his nephew's crestfallen expression. "That wasn't just what you wanted me to say, was it?" he added.

      "Not exactly," admitted the boy with a returning grin. "All right, Uncle