She was not especially successful at any of this.
The books had been knocked down somewhere around three o’clock. This had been Biscuit’s doing, and then later muddied footsteps had been dragged in through the door. Midge, that time, and the result of the garden visit.
Temperance had meant to have someone clean them up. She had noticed them, registered them as a thing that needed doing, and then become absorbed in her book again and let the afternoon move on around her without addressing it.
She would address it later, she had told herself.
What was the hurry, anyway?
Later, it turned out, was now.
Harper was not a happy man looking at the state of the house. His gaze moved across the corridor.
The muddy footprints along the left side of the runner and the three books still on the floor. Joseph, who had stopped running the moment his father appeared and was now standing very still halfway down the corridor.
“Joseph,” Harper said.
Joseph’s posture, which had already been straight, became a different kind of straight.
“Father,” he said.
“Come here.”
Joseph walked down the corridor toward his father with the measured steps and stopped in front of Harper and stood correctly.
Harper looked at his son for a long moment.
“What have you been doing?” Harper said.
“I was, well,” Joseph stopped. He began again. “Miss Hosmer and I were...”
“I can see what you were doing.” Harper’s voice did not change. “I am asking you to tell me.”
“We were running,” Joseph said, in the flat, direct tone of a child who had decided that honesty was, at minimum, more defensible than an inadequate alternative.
“In the house?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were running in the house,” Harper said, “after I have told you, repeatedly and clearly, what the standards of behavior in this household are. You knocked books from the table.”
“Oh, that was not him. That was Biscuit,” Temperance said.
Harper looked at her and his expression did not invite the interjection.
“You allowed the dog inside with muddy feet.”
“That was also…” Temperance began in defense.
“Miss Hosmer, I will speak to you in a moment.”
She closed her mouth.
Joseph had not moved. He was looking at a point somewhere past his father’s left shoulder.
“You are ten years old,” Harper said to his son. “You are not a child of five. You know what is expected of you. You know how a young gentleman conducts himself, and you know why it matters. I should not have to explain it to you again. Go upstairs and change your clothes. Tell Watkins I want to see your Latin exercises before dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” Joseph said.
