“The old cat!” said Hughie to himself. “She just stopped me. I was going to put it back.”
The memory that he had resolved to undo his wrong brought him a curious sense of relief.
“I was just going to put it back,” he said, “when she had to interfere.”
He was conscious of a sense of injury against Jessie. It was not his fault that that money was not now in the drawer.
“I'll put it back in the morning, anyhow,” he said, firmly. But even as he spoke he was conscious of an infinality in his determination, while he refused to acknowledge to himself a secret purpose to leave the question open till the morning. But this determination, inconclusive though it was, brought him a certain calm of mind, so that when his mother came into his room she found him sound asleep.
She stood beside his bed looking down upon him for a few moments, with face full of anxious sadness.
“There's something wrong with the boy,” she said to herself, stooping to kiss him. “There's something wrong with him,” she repeated, as she left the room. “He's not the same.”
During these weeks she had been conscious that Hughie had changed in some way to her. The old, full, frank confidence was gone. There was a constraint in his manner she could not explain. “He is no longer a child,” she would say to herself, seeking to allay the pain in her heart. “A boy must have his secrets. It is foolish in me to think anything else. Besides, he is not well. He is growing too fast.” And indeed, Hughie's pale, miserable face gave ground enough for this opinion.
“That boy is not well,” she said to her husband.
“Which boy?”