Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself back into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly. One name became articulate through his sobs. “My mother!” he moaned. “It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my mother too!”
“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,” remarked Baumgartner sardonically.
“You don’t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this? She mustn’t hear it!” cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming eyes. “For God’s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!”
“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing shrug.
“But my part in it!”
“You said it had got to come out.”
“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!”
“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?”
“So I did; but now I don’t!” cried Pocket, vehemently. “Now I would give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I’ve done—than drag them all through that!”
“Do you mean what you say?”