Produced by Roger Frank, Matthew Wheaton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN [Illustration: And over them both ... hung the moon and stars.] THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN _A NOVEL_ BY COSMO HAMILTON WITH FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE O. BAKER [Illustration] BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916 _Copyright, 1916_, BY COSMO HAMILTON. _All rights reserved_ Published, October, 1916 THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. To MY WIFE CONTENTS PART ONE--YOUTH PART TWO--THE CITY PART THREE--LIFE PART ONE YOUTH THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN I When Peter Guthrie laughed the rooks stirred on the old trees behind the Bodleian and the bored cab-drivers who lolled in uncomfortable attitudes on their cabs in St. Giles perked up their heads. He threw open his door one morning and leaving one of these laughs of his rolling round the quad of St. John's College found the recumbent form of Nicholas Kenyon all among his cushions as usual, and as usual smoking his cigarettes and reading his magazines. The words "as usual" seemed to be stamped on his forehead. "What d'you think?" cried Peter, filling the room like a thirty-mile gale. "You ought to know that I don't think. It's a form of exercise that I never indulge in." Kenyon lit a fresh cigarette from the one which he had half-smoked and with peculiar expertness flicked the end out of the window into St. Giles Street, which ran past the great gates of the college. He hoped that it might have fallen on somebody's head, but he didn't get up to see. "Well," said Peter, "I was coming down the High just now and an awful pretty girl passed with a Univ. man. She looked at me--thereby very nearly laying me flat on my face--and I heard her ask, 'Who's that?' It was the man's answer that makes me laugh. He said: 'Oh, he's only a Rhodes scholar!'" And off he went again. Nicholas Kenyon raised his immaculate person a few inches and looked round at his friend. The Harvard man, with his six-foot-one of excellent muscles and sinews, his square shoulders and deep chest, and his fine, honest, alert and healthy face, made most people ask who he was. "If I'd been you," said Kenyon, "I should have made a mental note of that Univ. blighter in order to land him one the next time you saw him, that he wouldn't easily forget." "Why? I liked it, from a man of his type. I've been 'only a damned Rhodes scholar' to all the little pussy purr-purrs ever since I first walked the High in my American-made clothes. I owe that fellow no grudge; and if I meet that girl again--which I shall make a point of doing--I bet you anything you like that his scoffing remark will lend a touch of romance to me which will be worth a lot." "Was she something out of the ordinary?" "Quite," said Peter.