“What does it matter, Letty? What can mamma care for all that now? She shall not be troubled.”
And she was not. Even Miss Bethia could not bring herself to put aside the words of the boy who lay sobbing in the dark, outside his mother’s door.
“He’s right,” said she. “It don’t matter the least in the world. There don’t anything seem to matter much. She sha’n’t be worried. Let it go,” said Miss Bethia, with a break in her sharp voice. “It’ll fit, I dare say, well enough—and if it don’t, you can fix it afterwards. Let it go now.”
But David came down, humble and sorry, in a little while.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Bethia,” said he. “I don’t suppose mamma would have cared, and you might have gone in. Only—” His voice failed him.
“Don’t worry a mite about it,” said Miss Bethia, with unwonted gentleness. “It don’t matter—and it is to you your mother must look now.”
But this was more than David could bear. Shaking himself free from her detaining hand, he rushed away out of sight—out of the house—to the hay-loft, the only place where he could hope to be alone. And he was not alone there; for the first thing he heard when the sound of his own sobbing would let him hear anything, was the voice of some one crying by his side.
“Is it you, Jem?” asked he, softly.
“Yes, Davie.”
And though they lay there a long time in the darkness, they did not speak another word till they went into the house again.