Helen kissed her father’s forehead, and went quietly up to Dexter’s room, listened for a few moments, heard a low sob, and then, softly turning the handle of the door, she entered, to stand there, quite taken aback.
The boy was crouched in a heap on the floor, sobbing silently, and with his breast heaving with the agony of spirit he suffered.
For that she was prepared, but the tears rose in her eyes as she grasped another fact. There, neatly folded and arranged, just as the Union teaching had prompted him, were the clothes the boy had worn that day, even to the boots placed under the chair, upon which they lay, while the boy had taken out and dressed himself again in his old workhouse livery, his cap lying on the floor by his side.
Helen crossed to him softly, bent over him, and laid her little white hand upon his head.
The boy sprang to his feet as if he had felt a blow, and stood before her with one arm laid across his eyes, as, in shame for his tears, he bent his head.
“Dexter,” she said again, “what are you going to do?”
“Going back again,” he said hoarsely. “I’m such a bad un. They always said I was.”
“And is that the way to make yourself better?”
“I can’t help it,” he said, half defiantly. “It’s no use to try, and I’m going back.”
“To grieve me, and make me sorry that I have been mistaken?”