“You have given me your word, sir, that you will come quietly up to the house,” he said coldly.
“Yes, sir,” said Dexter sadly.
The doctor, signed to Dan’l and Peter to come up to them.
“You can go on first,” he said; and the men passed on.
“I don’t want you to feel as if you were a prisoner, Dexter,” said the doctor gravely. “It is one of the grandest things in a gentleman—his word—which means his word of honour.”
Dexter had nothing he could say; and with a strange swelling at the throat he walked on beside the doctor, gazing at the pavement a couple of yards in front of him, and suffering as a sensitive boy would suffer as he felt how degraded and dirty he looked, and how many people in the town must know of his running away, and be gazing at him, now that he was brought back by the doctor, who looked upon him as a thief.
Every house and shop they passed was familiar. There were several of the tradespeople too standing at their doors ready to salute the doctor, and Dexter’s cheeks burned with shame. His punishment seemed more than he could bear.
In another ten minutes they would be at the house, where Maria would open the door, and give him a peculiar contemptuous look—the old look largely intensified; and but for the doctor’s words, and the promise given, the boy felt that he must have run away down the first side-turning they passed.
Then, as Maria faded from his mental vision, pleasant old Mrs Millett appeared, with her hands raised, and quite a storm of reproaches ready to be administered to him, followed, when she had finished and forgiven him, as he knew she would forgive him, by a dose of physic, deemed by her to be absolutely necessary after his escapade.
The house at last, and everything just as Dexter had anticipated. Maria opened the door, and then wrinkled up her forehead and screwed up her lips in a supercilious smile.