"I am afraid things have
reached a crisis, Joe. I have watched it coming on for a year now--your
poor scholarship, your carelessness and inattention, your constant
desire to be out of the house and away in search of adventures of one
sort or another."
He paused, as though expecting a reply; but Joe remained silent.
"I have given you plenty of liberty. I believe in liberty. The finest
souls grow in such soil. So I have not hedged you in with endless rules
and irksome restrictions. I have asked little of you, and you have come
and gone pretty much as you pleased. In a way, I have put you on your
honor, made you largely your own master, trusting to your sense of right
to restrain you from going wrong and at least to keep you up in your
studies. And you have failed me. What do you want me to do? Set you
certain bounds and time-limits? Keep a watch over you? Compel you by
main strength to go through your books?
"I have here a note," Mr. Bronson said after another pause, in which he
picked up an envelop from the table and drew forth a written sheet.
Joe recognized the stiff and uncompromising scrawl of Miss Wilson, and
his heart sank.
His father began to read:
"Listlessness and carelessness have characterized
his term's work, so that when the examinations
came he was wholly unprepared.
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