"I can't. I say, mother, I suppose I'm stupid, though you never tell me so. I know I'm different from other people, somehow. I wish you would tell me just what it is. I don't want to be different from other people. Of course I know I could never be as clever as you, nor the colonel. But then you're awfully clever, both of you. Father used to call me an idiot, but I'm not. I saw an idiot once, and his eyes turned in, and he couldn't shut his mouth, and he couldn't talk properly."
"Are you sure that your father ever called you an idiot, Archie?"
Helen's lips were oddly pale, and her voice was low. Archie laughed in a wooden way.
"Oh, yes! I'm quite sure," he said. "I remember, because he hit me on the back of the head with the knob of his stick when he said so. That was the first time. Then he got into the way of saying it. I wasn't very big then."
Helen leaned back and closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the word 'forgiven' as she had written it after his name,--'Henry Harmon, New York. Forgiven.' It had a strange look. She had not known that he had ever struck the boy cruelly.
"Why did you never tell me?" she asked slowly.
"Oh, I don't know. It would have been like a cry-a-baby to go running to you. I just waited."
Helen did not guess what was coming.
"Did he strike you again with the knob of his stick?" she asked.
"Lots of times, with all sorts of things. Once, when you were off somewhere for two or three days on a visit, he came at me with a poker. That was the last time. I suppose he had been drinking more than usual."