In the meanwhile Walter didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t return to school: Pennewip had closed for him that fountain of knowledge.
Nor was he allowed to go out for a walk. “Who knows what he will do if I let him out of my sight?” said his mother, who was presumably afraid that he might make a fresh attack on the cloisters. As a matter of fact, she denied him this privilege merely because Walter asked it.
She expressed the opinion that it was best not to let bad children have their own way.
If Walter had been right wise, he would have pretended to be thoroughly in love with that dark back room; then, for his moral improvement, he would have been chased down the steps, and away to his sawmills.
But Walter was not smart.
He was forbidden to go into the front room because the young ladies did not care to see him.
That back room was more than dark: It was narrow, and dirty, and reeked with all the fumes of “III, 7, c.” But Walter was used to all this and much more. He had always been a martyr—bandages, poultices, bandy legs, biblical history, rickets, poems on goodness, evening prayers, the judgment day, hobgoblins for wicked children, closed eyes before and after the slice of bread, sleeping with crooked knees, committing sins, fear for the torn breeches, “divine service” with and without sensible accompaniment!
That droll robber song, whose origin we know so well, shows how easily his childish soul was moved by whatever seemed great to him. He was a pure child, and he was a good boy. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly. The criminal character of his song was due to his desire to grasp what is greater than everything else and to be the leader in that world created by his childish fancy.
Robber—good! But a first-class robber, a robber of robbers, a robber without mercy—for pleasure!
As to the gross mistreatment of women mentioned in his song, he had no idea what it meant. He used the word for the sake of rhyme, and because from certain sentences in his book he had got the impression that it must afford great pleasure.