"Home?" And Dolly's face now grew very grave indeed.
"Yes. I've been splitting my head thinking; and I've about made up my mind. I think I'll go home." Rupert was very serious too, and pulled the oars with a leisurely, mechanical stroke, which showed he was not thinking of them.
"What home? London, do you mean?"
"Well, not exactly. I should think not! No, I mean Boston, or Lynn rather. There's my old mother."
"Oh!—your mother," said Dolly slowly. "And she is at Lynn. Is she alone there?"
"She's been alone ever since I left her; and I'm thinking that's what she hadn't ought to be."
Dolly paused. The indication seemed to be, that Rupert was taking up the notion of duty; duty towards others as well as pleasure for himself; and a great throb of gladness came up in her heart, along with the sudden shadow of what was not gladness.
"I think you are quite right, Rupert," she said soberly. "Then you are purposing to go back to Lynn to take care of her?"
"I set out to see the world and to be something," Rupert went on, looking thoughtfully out to sea;—"and I've done one o' the two. I've seen the world. I don' know as I should ever be anything, if I staid in it. But your talk that day—those days—wouldn't go out of my head; and I thought I'd give it up, and go home to my old mother."
"I'll tell you what I think, Rupert," said Dolly; "a man is a great deal more likely to come out right in the end and 'be something,' if he follows God's plan for him, than if he makes a plan for himself. Anyhow, I'd rather have that 'Well done,' by and by"—— She stopped.