“Poor Mas’ Don!” said Jem, as he watched the lad go out through the gate; “he’s down in the dumps now, and no mistake; and dumps is the lot o’ all on us, more or less.”
Then Jem went in to his tea, and Don went slowly home to his, and matters were exactly as he had foreseen. His uncle was scarcely polite; Kitty gave him sharp, indignant glances when their eyes met, and then averted hers; and from time to time his mother looked at him in so pitiful and imploring a manner that one moment he felt as if he were an utter scoundrel, and the next that he would do anything to take her in his arms and try and convince her that he was not so bad as she thought.
It was a curious mental encounter between pride, obstinacy, and the better feelings of his nature; and unfortunately the former won, for soon after the meal was over he hurried out of the room.
“I can’t bear it,” he cried to himself, as he went up to his own little chamber,—“I can’t bear it, and I will not. Every one’s against me. If I stop I shall be punished, and I can’t face all that to-morrow. Good-bye, mother. Some day you’ll think differently, and be sorry for all this injustice, and then—”
A tear moistened Don’s eye as he thought of his mother and her tender, loving ways, and of what a pity it was that they ever came there to his uncle’s, and it was not the tear that made Don see so blindly.
“I can’t stand it, and I will not,” he cried, passionately. “Uncle hates me, and Mike Bannock’s right, scoundrel as he is. Uncle has robbed me, and I’ll go and fight for myself in the world, and when I get well off I’ll come back and seize him by the throat and make him give up all he has taken.”
Don talked to himself a good deal more of this nonsense, and then, with his mind fully made up, he went to the chest of drawers, took out a handkerchief, spread it open upon the bed, and placed in it a couple of clean shirts and three or four pairs of stockings.
“There,” he said, as he tied them up tightly as small as he could, “I won’t have any more. I’ll go and start fair, so that I can be independent and be beholden to nobody.”
Tucking the bundle under his arm, he could not help feeling that it was a very prominent-looking package—the great checked blue and white handkerchief seeming to say, “This boy’s going to seek his fortune!” and he wished that he was not obliged to take it.
But, setting his teeth, he left the room with the drawers open, and his best suit, which he had felt disposed to take, tossed on a chair, and then began to descend.