Needless to say it had been--less than that would not have escaped Kimberly, and he was already enjoying the momentary discomfiture. Sugar at that moment saw a squirrel running down the walk and tore after him.
Francis with simple dignity took the empty snuff-box from the table and put it back in his pocket. His composure was restored and the incident to him was closed.
Kimberly understood him so well that it was not hard to turn the talk to a congenial subject. "I drove past the college the other day. I see your people are doing some building."
Francis shrugged his shoulders. "A laundry, Robert."
"It is over toward where you said the academy ought to go."
"My poor academy! They do not think it will ever come."
"You have more buildings now than you have students. What do you want with more buildings?"
"No, no. We have three hundred students--three hundred now." Francis looked at his questioner with eyes fiercely eager. "That is the college, Robert. The academy is something else--for what I told you."
"What did you tell me?" Kimberly lighted a cigar and Francis began again to explain.
"This is it: Our Sisters in the city take now sixteen hundred boys from seven to eight years old. These boys they pick up from the orphan courts, from the streets, from the poor parents. When these boys are twelve the Sisters cannot keep them longer, they must let them go and take in others.
"Here we have our college and these boys are ready for it when they are sixteen. But, between are four fatal years--from twelve to sixteen. If we had a school for _such_ boys, think what we could do. They would be always in hand; now, they drift away. They must go to work in the city filth and wickedness. Ah, they need the protection we could give them in those terrible four years, Robert. They need the training in those years to make of them mechanics and artisans--to give them a chance, to help them to do more than drift without compass or rudder--do you not see?
"Those boys that are bright, that we find ready to go further, they are ready at sixteen for our college; we keep and educate them. But the others--the greater part--at sixteen would leave us, but trained to earn. And strengthened during those four critical years against evil. Ah!"