“Yes, I do,” she answered, to help him out as he hesitated. “I’m awful timid; sudden noises always make me jump.”
“Yes, I know. And I was thinking how it was with that boy.”
“What boy?” she asked.
“The feller they had to send back from camp. Chapin, I think was the name. You heard about him?”
He waited, looking down at her.
Suddenly Julie comprehended a strained anxiety in his tone, and her heart began to beat quickly.
“Yes, I heard,” she said, and kept her eyes down on her knitting now, not to look too closely at him.
“They said he just cried”—he swallowed nervously—“all the time in camp. They said they couldn’t do a thing with him.”
“I know; I heard.” Julie knit faster.
“They said everybody’d laugh at him from now on,” he continued.