"How's ma?"
He got no answer, because Quidmore followed Mrs. Tollivant into the front parlor, where they shut the door. In anticipation of being taken home, the boy ran up to his room and packed his bag.
"How's ma?"
He called out the question from halfway down the stairs. Quidmore, emerging from the parlor with Mrs. Tollivant, ignored it again. Bidding good-by to his hostess and thanking her for taking in the boy, he went through these courtesies with a nervous anxiety almost amounting to anguish to convince her of the truth of something he had said.
"How's ma?"
They were in the car at last so that he could no longer be denied.
"She's—she's—not there."
All the events of the past year focussed themselves into the question that now burst on Tom's lips. "Is she—dead?"
The lisping voice was sorrowful. "She was buried yesterday."
With his habit of thinking twice, the boy asked nothing more. Having asked nothing at the minute, he felt less inclined to ask anything as they drove onward. Something within him rejected the burden of knowing. While he would not hold himself aloof, he would not involve himself more than events involved him according as they fell out. His reasoning was obscure, but his instincts, grown self-protective from necessity, were positive. Whatever had happened, whatever was to be right and wrong to other people, his own motive must be loyalty.