Warden did look, and comprehended at a glance. His essay was hopelessly lost! He had no other copy! A quieter and better man might have felt provocation. Into Warden’s breast there entered a devil. He caught the little child roughly in his arms, dealt him several sharp blows, and rushed with him into the adjoining bedroom.
“There, you bad, bad boy! Get out of my sight! I never want to see you again.” He locked the door on Roy, and might have been heard pacing up and down his sitting-room. He was in a furious rage, and would scarcely have minded then had any one told him that he had seriously injured his child.
Meanwhile the little child, stunned by the blows, terrified by the rough, hard words, totally uncomprehending what he had done wrong, for Faith had many times given him old papers to tear, lay for a moment or two trembling on the floor. Then he began to sob loudly; then he rose to his feet. It was growing dark in the bedroom, and Roy hated the dark. He ran to the door which divided bedroom and sitting-room, and, shaking it cried loudly:
“Yet me in—yet me in!”
No regard was paid to his eager little voice, and his cries and distress were redoubled. Where was Faith? What did it all mean? He was confused, frightened, pained. He could not comprehend how or why. Turning his back at last to the inhospitable closed door, and standing, a pitiable little object, with all his golden curls lying in a tangled mass on his forehead, he saw a welcome light in another part of the room. This light came from the door which opened on to the passage, and was but very seldom used. Now, through some accident, it was about an inch or two ajar.
Roy saw the light in the passage beyond, and ran to it with a glad cry. When he got there, the thought entered his baby head that he would go and look for Faith. His father had turned him away; his father had hurt him and not been at all nice. Roy, heaving a great sob, felt he did not at all understand his father. Yes; he would go and look for Faith. When she was neither in the sitting-room nor in the bedroom she was out. He would go out to look for her, for she was always very nice.
Down step after step he stumbled, no one meeting him, no one observing. Down the long hall at the end he ran, and out through the open door. His head uncovered, his little round arms bare, he ran quickly away from his home. A baby of two years to be lost in the London streets!