Silence fell upon the class as the boys looked one at the other, but they each mentally resolved to take the master's word for the future.
He went back and told Mrs. Winn that it was no secret in the school that Tom had been building a rabbit hutch with his friend, and the probability was that he had gone there frequently, and not simply once or twice. He said what he could to comfort the poor woman, for he could see she was terribly distressed over what she had heard concerning Tom.
On her way back, she called to tell the doctor what she had heard at the school, and how, in spite of the master's warning, Tom must have gone to the forbidden street.
"Ah! And it is this disobedience that is troubling him, and causing the brain mischief. I am glad you have found this out, Mrs. Winn, but I am afraid it will make our work the harder; and he will suffer a good deal more in his head from this cause than from the fever alone, for the one will complicate the other, and he will need the most careful nursing and watching."
The widow went home sadly depressed and disheartened. She did not mind how hard she worked for her children; but to work hard as she had done, and then learn that, through her boy's wilfulness and folly, she had laboured almost in vain, was bitter indeed, and she could not help telling Elsie something of what she felt.
Poor Elsie could not bear to feel angry with her brother, now he was so ill, but she turned her wrath upon Jack Bond. "It is that wicked boy, mother, not our Tom who is to blame," protested Elsie.
"But, my dear, Tom is to blame, for he ought to have known better than to go near the street after the master had warned the boys not to do so."
She did not say a word to Elsie about the other news she had heard at the school. She could not talk of Tom's disgrace even to Elsie just now; she felt it too keenly. That her boy should be expelled from a class they had all thought it an honour that he should enter, was a very great disgrace she thought, and at least she would spare Elsie the bitterness of this knowledge if she possibly could.
She went back to the sick-room, and found Tom moaning, and tossing, and crying out about the nails in his head; and the neighbour who had come in to stay with him while she went out, told her he had continued these moanings all the time she was gone.
"I tried to make him understand that we were not putting nails into his head," said the old lady.