The boys would. I backed from the room, the whip behind me, carefully kept without Silvia's angle of vision. Before Ptolemy resumed his rôle of chief, he bestowed a knowing and maddening wink upon me. I wished that we had remained neighbor-less. I wished that the aborigines would scalp Felix Polydore and the writer of Modern Antiquities. Then we could land their brats on the Probate Court. I wished that this were the reign of Herod. I vowed I would backslide from the Presbyterian faith since it no longer included in its articles of belief the eternal damnation of infants. How long, O Catiline, would-- A paralyzing suspicion flashed into the maelstrom of my vituperative maledictions. I rushed wildly upstairs to our combination bedroom, sickroom, and nursery, where Silvia sat like a guardian angel beside the Polydore patient. "Silvia," I shouted excitedly, "do you suppose those diabolical Polydore parents purposely played this trick on us? Was it a premeditated Polydore plan to abandon their young? And can you blame them for playing us for easy marks? Could any parents, Polydore, or otherwise, ever come back to such fiends as these?" "Hush!" she cautioned, without so much as a glance in my direction. "You'll wake Diogenes!" Wake Diogenes! Ye Gods! And she had also implored the brothers of Diogenes to continue their anvil chorus! This took the last stitch of starch from my manly bosom. Spiritless and spineless I bore all things, believed all things--but hoped for nothing. CHAPTER V _In Which We Take a Vacation_ Diogenes finally convalesced to his former state of ruggedness and obstreperousness. He continued, however, to cling to Silvia and to call her "mudder." To my amusement the other children followed suit and she was now "muddered" by all the Polydores. "I am glad," I remarked, "that they scorn to include me in their adoption. I wouldn't fancy being 'faddered' by the Polydores." "You won't be," Ptolemy, appearing seemingly from nowhere, assured me. "We've named you stepdaddy." "If it be possible, Silvia," I implored, "let this cup pass from me." "I am going down to the intelligence office today," replied Silvia soothingly. "Diogenes is well enough to go home now, and I can run over there every evening and see that he is properly put to bed." I went down town feeling like a mule relieved of his pack. When I came home that afternoon, I found Silvia sitting on the shaded porch serenely sewing. A Sabbath-like stillness pervaded. Not a Polydore in sight or sound. "Oh!" I cried buoyantly. "The Polydores have been returned to their home station!" "No," she replied calmly. "They told me at the intelligence office that it would be absolutely impossible to persuade, bribe, or hire a servant to assume the charge of the Polydore place."