Later on the woman from the mill came in to sit with mother.  She brought Jack some sweets, but instead of playing with him she burst into tears.  She made more noise when she cried than mother; in fact he was afraid that in a minute he would have to laugh at her snortings, so he went into the parlour and sat there in the dark, eating his sweets, and knitting his brow over the complexities of life.  He could see five stars, and there was a light behind the red curtain of the front bedroom at Arber’s farm.  It was about twelve times as large as a star, and a much prettier colour.  By nearly closing his eyes he could see everything double, so that there were ten stars and two red lights; he was trying to make everything come treble when the gate clicked and he saw his father’s shadow.  He was delighted with this happy end to a tiresome day, and as he ran through the passage he called out to mother to say that father was back.  Mother did not answer, but he heard a bit of noise in the kitchen as he opened the front door.

He said “Good evening” in the grown-up voice that father encouraged, but father slipped in and shut the door without saying a word.  Every night when he came back from the post-office he brought Jack the gummed edgings off the sheets of stamps, and Jack held out his hand for them as a matter of course.  Automatically father felt in his overcoat pocket and pulled out a great handful.  “Take care of them, they’re the last you’ll get,” he said; but when Jack asked why, his father looked at him with the same hopeless expression that he had found in his mother’s eyes a short while before.  Jack felt a little cross that every one should be so stupid.

When they went into the kitchen everybody looked very strange, and Jack sat down in the corner and listened for an explanation.  As a rule the conversation of the grown-up people did not amuse him, but tonight he felt that something had happened, and that if he kept quiet he might find out what it was.  He had noticed before that when the grown-ups talked they always said the same things over and over again, and now they were worse than usual.  Father said, “It’s no good, I’ve got to go through it;” the mill-woman said, “Whatever made you do it, George?” And mother said, “Nothing will ever happen to me again!” They all went on saying these things till Jack grew tired of listening, and started plaiting his stamp-paper into a mat.  If you did it very neatly it was almost as good as an ordinary sheet of paper by the time you had finished.  By and by, while he was still at work, the mill-woman brought him his supper on a plate, and raising his head he saw that father and mother were sitting close together, looking at each other, and saying nothing at all.  He was very disappointed that although father had come home they had not had any jokes all the evening, and as they were all so dull he did not very much mind being sent to bed when he had finished his supper.  When he said good-night to father,