Her eldest child's conduct began at last to be something of a grievance to Emmie. She appealed to no one for help to reduce him to obedience. She would not have dared do that; an intimate sense forbade it, a scruple which would have had no voice, perhaps, had she loved him more. She excused and up-held him in her little wars with Lucretia, and respected Gregory's reluctance to interfere with him, founded in justice on the consciousness of a deep-seated, invincible dislike; but she fretted under his undutifulness and only refrained from satisfying the desire to attempt asserting her power over him, though it should be futile as ever, in the idea that, at the worst, he would soon be leaving home, with Hector, for school, when the detested violin must be given up and stronger hands than her own find a way to bend his obstinate spirit. At the same time, in a corner of her heart, she felt unreasonably, unaccountably hurt, as perhaps she would have felt if Dorastus's father had suddenly ceased from his persecutions and she had known by that sign that, worm as he was, he had ceased to care for her. "This is all very well; but when you get to school--" Phrases begun on that line became frequent in Dorastus's ear as the time approached. He heard them with a singularly bright eye. The two boys set out for school together, under the guardianship of the tutor. Consternation fell on the family when it was known that Dorastus had been missed on the way. The boy was traced to London; there he was easily lost among the millions of its inhabitants. While the question was in discussion whether it behooved Gregory himself to travel to London and institute a search for the runaway, came a letter from the boy, making it easily decent for his step-father to leave the stinging weed to get its growth where it might without being a nuisance, and reconciling his mother to letting him take his chances as he pleased, since he was so sure they were brilliant--very brilliant, those chances. His certainty of himself, his enthusiasm, were such that gradually they communicated themselves in a degree to her. Why not? After all, his father, they had said, was a great man; princes had honored him. An involuntary respect crept through her for Dorastus's daring. It seemed advisable at least to give him the opportunity he wanted; the more that the process of finding him, bringing him back in what to him would seem ignominy, and thereafter keeping watch over him, was uncomfortable to think of. His letter was to his mother, a mixture of boyishness and manliness, more frank than any speech she had had from him in a long time. It vaguely stirred her heart; for it seemed to restore to her something that possessing she had not prized, but, careful economist, did not like to think lost.