“You have an excellent home here, Don, the gift of one who has kindly taken the place toward you of your father. There, I will listen to no more from you, for this is all foolish fighting of your worse against your better self.”
There was a quiet dignity in his mother’s words which awed Don for the moment, but the gentle embrace given the next minute seemed to undo that which the firmness had achieved, and that night the cloud over the lad’s life seemed darker than ever.
“She takes uncle’s side and thinks he is everything,” he said gloomily, as he went to bed. “She means right, but she is wrong. Oh, how I wish I could go right away somewhere and begin life all over again.”
Then he lay down to sleep, but slumber did not come, so he went on thinking of many things, to fall into a state of unconsciousness at last, from which he awoke to the fact that it was day—a very eventful day for him, but he did not awaken to the fact that he was very blind.
Chapter Three.
An Awkward Guinea.
It was a busy day at the yard, for a part of the lading of a sugar ship was being stored away in Uncle Josiah’s warehouses; but from the very commencement matters seemed to go wrong, and the state of affairs about ten o’clock was pretty ably expressed by Jem Wimble, who came up to Don as he was busy with pencil and book, keeping account of the deliveries, and said in a loud voice,—
“What did your uncle have for breakfast, Mas’ Don?”