“Do you want to oblige me, Dexter?” said Helen, wincing at the boy’s words.
“Yes, of course I do. Want me to fetch something?”
“No. Once more I want you to promise to leave off some of those objectionable words.”
“But it’s of no use to promise,” cried the boy, with a look of angry perplexity. “I always break my word.”
“Then why do you!”
“I dunno,” said Dexter. “There’s something in me I think that makes me. You tell me to be a good boy, and I say I will, and I always mean to be; but somehow I can’t. I think it’s because nobody likes me, because—because—because I came from there.”
“Do I behave to you as if I did not like you?” said Helen reproachfully.
The boy was on his knees beside her in a moment, holding her hand against his cheek as he looked up at her with his lip working, and a dumb look of pitiful pleading in his eyes.
“I do not think I do, Dexter.”
He shook his head, and tried to speak. Then, springing up suddenly, he ran out of the study, dashed upstairs, half-blind with the tears which he was fighting back, and then with his head down through the open door into his bedroom, when there was a violent collision, a shriek followed by a score more to succeed a terrific crash, and when in alarm Helen and Mrs Millet ran panting up, it was to find Dexter rubbing his head, and Maria seated in the middle of the boy’s bedroom with the sherds of a broken toilet pail upon the floor, and an ewer lying upon its side, and the water soaking into the carpet.