A great tenderness for the boy stabbed at my heart. I longed to comfort him as I could comfort Laura or Jimmie. Was he not their brother and as much as they my child? Like a disease, misfortune and dishonor had suddenly attacked him. My breast was simmering with bitter self-reproach.
"Come, Randolph," I put my arm about his shoulder. "Pull yourself together. We must live this business down. There's your education to be thought of. You must finish, don't you see?"
"You mean—you'd give me another chance?"
"Yes, Randolph," I answered huskily, "and still another." At that moment I felt I could have given him seventy-times seven.
"Well, then," he answered, with the first gleam of interest I discerned in him, "will you let me go ahead and enlist?"
"Enlist," I recoiled from that. "In the army, you mean? You are so young."
"I mean in the navy—I want to do it, Uncle Ranny—I must do it—That's the only way I can begin again. I can't stay round where Alicia is."
My heart went utterly out to the boy in his misery. I knew not what to say to him. The pangs of despised love!
"Alicia has been your—" but it was futile to talk to him of Alicia.
"Go to bed, my boy," I said, gently urging him toward the door. "Get some rest and still your poor nerves. To-morrow we shall discuss and settle this matter in your best interests. Remember you are surrounded by your friends." With a faint gleam of gratitude in his eyes, he shuffled out unsteadily and I pressed his hand as we parted at the door. I heard him moving about in his room.