"I know. It aches," Miles whispered, with a sudden husky dropping of his voice.
"You'd better go to your mother straightway and ask her to put oil on it; that will soon draw out the fire."
"I can't," Miles gulped. "I can never go out among the people again. When they all think I tried to blow them up,—and when every one will know I have been newly whipped. I shall stay here forever." His voice died down as he spoke the last: it did not sound manly, but uncommon silly.
"You'd get mighty hungry if you did," the soldier answered him coolly. "You're going to your mother now, my man. Run along with you. I've to go on down into the gunroom, but I'll light you up the ladder."
Miles gave a tremulous gasp of resignation, and scuffed slowly to the foot of the ladder, where he paused and smeared the back of his hand across his cheeks; then turned to his companion. "Captain Standish," he hesitated; then, as it was the only possible way of learning what he wished to know before he showed himself among the company, he blurted out desperately, "Will you tell me, is my face clean?"
Captain Standish looked down at him with a funny expression in his eyes. "I think 'twill serve in a half light, if you slip directly into your father's cabin."
"Thank you, sir," Miles answered; then added hastily, "You see, there was something flew into my eye, and one that did not know might think—I had been crying."