“Am I doing that, Mums?” Phil’s voice was sober.

“I am afraid you are, Phil.  It troubles your father.  He was so disappointed when you wouldn’t serve on the library committee.  They were disappointed too.  They didn’t expect it of your father’s son.”

“I—­I wasn’t interested.”

“No, you weren’t interested.  That was the trouble.  You ought to have been.  You have had your college training, the world of books has been thrown wide open for you.  You come back here and aren’t interested in seeing that others less fortunate get the right kind of books into their hands and heads.  I don’t want to preach, dear.  But education isn’t only a privilege.  It is a responsibility.”

“Maybe you are right, Mums.  I didn’t think of it that way.  I just didn’t want to bother.  I was—­well, I was thinking too much about myself I suppose.”

“Youth is apt to.  There were other things too.  When they asked you to take charge of the Fourth of July pageant, to dig up Dunbury’s past history and make it live for us again, your father and I both thought you would enjoy it.  He was tremendously excited about it, full of ideas to help.  But the project fell through because nobody would undertake the leadership.  You were too busy.  Every one was too busy.”

“But, Mums, I was busy,” Phil defended himself.  “It is no end of a job to put things like that through properly.”

“Most things worth doing are no end of a job.  Your father would have taken it with all the rest he has on his hands and made a success of it.  But he was hurt by your high handed refusal to have anything to do with it and he let it go, though you know having Fourth of July community celebrations is one of his dearest hobbies—­always has been since he used to fight so hard to get rid of the old, wretched noise, law breaking and rowdyism kind of village celebration you and the other young Dunbury vandals delighted in.”

Phil flushed at that.  The point went home.  He remembered vividly his boyish self tearing reluctantly from Doctor Holiday’s fireworks impelled by an unbearably guilty conscience to confess to Stuart Lambert that his own son had been a transgressor against the law.  Boy as he was, he had gotten out of the interview with his father that night a glimpse into the ideal citizenship which Stuart Lambert preached and lived and worked for.  He had understood a little then.  He understood better now having stood beside his father man to man.

“I am sorry, Mums.  I would have done the thing if I’d known Dad wanted me to.  Why didn’t he say so?”

Mrs. Lambert smiled.

“Dad doesn’t say much about what he wants.  You will have to learn to keep your eyes open and find out for yourself.  I did.”

“Any more black marks on my score?  I may as well eat the whole darned pie at once.”  Phil’s smile was humorous but his eyes were troubled.  It was a bit hard when you had been thinking you had played your part fairly creditably to discover you had been fumbling your cues wretchedly all along.