"She has gone away--you know it," said his mother in a casual tone of voice.
"Away?" He turned pale and then crimson. So she had gone without saying good-bye to him! All at once he had no appetite, although he had been so hungry before. Every mouthful choked him; he looked stiffly at his plate--he dared not look up for fear of crying.
His parents spoke of this and that--all trivial matters --and a voice within him cried: "Why has she gone without saying good-bye to me?" It hurt him very much. He could not understand it--she was so fond of him. How could she have found it in her heart to go away without letting him know where he could find her? His Cillchen to leave him like that! Oh, she could not have done so--not of her own free will, oh no, no. And just when he was at school.
He was seized with a sudden suspicion: he had not thought of such a thing before, but now it was clear to him--oh, he was not so stupid as all that--she had had to go just because he was at school. His mother had never liked Cilia, and she had not wanted her to say good-bye to him.
The boy cast angry glances at his mother from under his lowered lashes: that was horrid of her.
He rose from the table full of suppressed wrath, and dragged his feet up the stairs to his room. He found the pictures of the saints that had been stuck into his drawer at once--"With love from Cilia"--and then he gave way to his fury and his grief. He stamped with his feet and kissed the gaudy pictures, and his tears made lots of dark spots on them. Then he rushed downstairs into the dining-room, where his father was still sitting at the table and his mother packing cakes and fruit into her small bag. Oh, she had wanted to go for a walk with him. That would be the very last thing he would do.
"Where has Cilia gone? Why haven't you let her say good-bye to me?"
His mother gazed at him, petrified; how did the boy guess her innermost thoughts? She could not utter a word. But he did not let her speak either, his boy's voice, which was still high, cracked and then became deep and hoarse: "Yes, you--oh, I know it quite well --you did not want her to say good-bye to me. You've sent her away so that I should not see her any more--yes, you! That's horrid of you! That's--that's vile!" He went towards her.
She shrank back slowly--he raised his hands--was he going to strike her?
"You rascal!" His father's hand seized him by the scruff of his neck. "How dare you? Raise your hand against your mother?" The angry man shook the boy until his teeth chattered, and did so again and again. "You--you rascal, you good-for-nothing!"