He held the sentence there, leaving Tom to wonder if he had thoughts of restitution, or possibly of repentance.
"I don't owe 'em nothink," he ended. "Belonged to me just as much as it belonged to them. Nothink don't belong to nobody. I never was able to figger it out just the way I wanted to, because I ain't never had no eddication; but Gord's lor I believes it is. Never could get the 'ang o' the lor o' man, not nohow."
To comfort him, Tom suggested that perhaps when he got through college he might be able to take the subject up.
"I wouldn't bind yer to it, Kiddy. Tough job! Why, when I give up socializin' to try and win over some o' them orthodocks I thought as they'd jump to 'ear me. Not a bit of it! The more I told 'em that nothink didn't belong to nobody the more they said I was a nut."
Having lain silent for a minute he continued, with that light in his face which corresponded to a wink of the blind eye: "I don't bind yer to nothink, Kiddy. That's what I've always wanted yer to feel. You're a free boy. When I'm up and around again, and yer've got yer eddication, and have gone out on yer own, yer won't have me a-'angin' on yer 'ands. No, sir! I'll be off—free as a bird—back with the old gang again—and yer needn't be worried a-thinkin' I'll miss you—nor nothink!"
It was a few days after this that the businesslike nurse who had first admitted him hinted that, if she were Tom, Honey would have a clergyman come to visit him. A few days more and it might be too late.
Honey with a clergyman! It was something Tom had never thought of. The incongruous combination made him smile. Nevertheless, it was what people who were dying had—a clergyman come to visit them. If a clergyman could do Honey any good....
"Honey," he suggested, artfully, next day, "now that you're pinned to bed for awhile, and have got the time, wouldn't you like to see a clergyman sometimes, and talk things over?"
There was again that light in the face which took the place of a wink. "What things?"