There was a suggestion of swagger and an assumption of manliness in his manner, that troubled me.
I noticed, too, that he avoided many of his old haunts.
Often he would strike out across the downs and be away from early morning until starlight, and concerning his adventures he would be strangely reticent.
But I do not profess to have fathomed the ways and moods of boys, and I merely shrugged my shoulders, perhaps a little sorrowfully.
"I suppose he is growing up," thought I. And yet, for all that, I could not keep myself from wondering what influence was at work upon the boy's development. Even the doctor, who, of us all, saw the least of him, noticed the change, for he asked me suddenly, one late September day,
"What's the matter with Tommy?"
I looked at him with feigned surprise.
"I—he's all right, isn't he?"
The doctor shook his head.
"He has altered very much this summer, and I am afraid the alteration has not been good."