“Some day, perhaps,” answered Brydell hurriedly, and feeling a sob rising in his throat at the childish words. The woman and the little girl had confidence in him. He said good-by to them both, thanked Mrs. Laurison again, and followed her husband out, and along a path bordered with alders, to the main road half a mile off.
Neither spoke a word. When they reached a stile, beyond which the white line of the sandy road glimmered faintly in the half-light, the farmer turned to him:—
“Young man,” he said, “if you’ve done anything wrong,—and I can’t help suspecting you have,—’tain’t too late for you to mend. You’re young yet, and you’ve got a whole lifetime to make up for it in.”
Brydell had realized that the farmer suspected him, but hearing it put into words was a shock that altogether unnerved him.
“Why do you suspect me?” he asked in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.
“Because I can’t help suspecting an educated young feller with his father in the navy, who tramps about, asking for work on a farm.”
In all of his grief and anxiety and despair about his failing in his examinations, and when he thought the desire of his heart was thwarted, Brydell had never shed a tear. But when this new horror came upon him, he did what he had not done since he was a little boy—he broke into a passion of sobbing and crying. The farmer looked at him compassionately.
“You’re sorry for what you’ve done,” he said, “and that’s a good sign.”
“I’m not sorry, for I haven’t done anything,” burst out Brydell. “I am as honest as you are and as respectable. How do you think you’d feel if anybody accused you of being crooked? I’ve told you the truth. I got an appointment at the Naval Academy and I failed, and the congressman who gave it to me said he would hold it over for a year if I would work hard and promise to pass, and I wrote my father I meant to work for that and for my living, too, and I’m going to do it. That’s all.”
Mr. Laurison hesitated for a moment. He had the wisdom of guileless people, which is sometimes better than that of worldly people, and he saw that Brydell was telling the truth, and he said so.