“I like that, Mas’ Don. ’Pon my word I do. Might just as well hit your head again the wall.”
“Better use yours for a battering ram, Jem,” said Don, angrily. “It’s thicker than mine.”
There was silence after this.
“He’s sulky because of what I’ve said,” thought Don.
“Oh, my poor head!” thought Jem. “How it do ache!”
Then he began to think about Sally, and what she would say or do when she found that he did not come back.
Just at the same time Don was reflecting upon his life of late, and how discontented he had been, and how he had longed to go away, while now he felt as if he would give anything to be back on his old stool in the office, writing hard, and trying his best to be satisfied with what seemed to be a peaceful, happy life.
A terrible sensation of despair came over him, and the idea of being dragged off to a ship, and carried right away, was unbearable. What were glorious foreign lands with their wonders to one who would be thought of as a cowardly thief?
As he leaned against a wall there in the darkness his busy brain pictured his stern-looking uncle telling his weeping mother that it was a disgrace to her to mourn over the loss of a son who could be guilty of such a crime, and then run away to avoid his punishment.
“Oh! If I had only been a little wiser,” thought Don, “how much happier I might have been.”