"Why—why, Kate Morgan give it to me. She t'ought I might want to buy a few extry t'ings."
David was unconvinced, but from principle he gave Tom the benefit of the doubt. He had the instinctive masculine repugnance to accepting money from a woman; so a moment later, when Kate came in, he said to her: "I want to thank for you for loaning that money to Tom. I understand and appreciate—but I don't need the money. You must take it back."
"What money?" she asked blankly.
She turned about on Tom, who was sitting at the foot of the bed where David could not see him. The boy's face was very white, and he was hardly breathing. He looked appealingly at her.
Kate's face darkened. "Tom," she said sharply, "I told you not to tell that!"
When she had gone, David called Tom to him and took his hand. "I beg your pardon, Tom," he said.
Tom made no answer at all.
All these days, when David was not chatting with Kate, or reading about the love of the fair mill-girl and the mill-owner's son, he was wanly staring into his future. He longed for the day when he could begin search again—and that day was also his great fear. Often he lay thinking for hours of Helen Chambers. He thought of the lovers she must have; of her marriage that might not be far off; of the noble place she would have in life—honoured, admired, a doer of good. He would never meet her, never speak to her—never see her, save perhaps as he had been doing, from places of shadow.
Well ... he prayed that she might be happy!