Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss Sheila—hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans for her. I'm her guardian—that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though the word had a fine taste.
Dickie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old.
"Keep away from her—hear me?"
"Yes, sir," said Dickie meekly.
After his father had gone out, Dickie sat for an instant with his head on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room door on the outside.
"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless, though, this morning!"
He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the partition, a sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled.
"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized Dickie in the hollow and unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels about noon."
Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling.
Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in his head and in his ankle and somewhere else—an indeterminate spot deep in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had frightened her—disgusted her. He must have been more drunk than he imagined. It was disgusting—and so hopeless. Perhaps it would be better to leave Millings.