Laura managed to shake her head.

“She never must have,” he said.  “Will you promise me to burn that book now?”

She nodded slowly.

“I—­I’m awfully sorry, Laura,” he said brokenly.  “I’m not idiot enough not to see that you’re suffering horribly.  I suppose I have done the most blundering thing possible.”  He stood a moment, irresolute, then turned to the door.  “Good-bye.”

Hedrick had just time to dive into the hideous little room of the multitudinous owls as Richard strode into the hall.  Then, with the closing of the front door, the boy was back at his post.

Laura stood leaning against the wall, the book clutched in her arms, as Richard had left her.  Slowly she began to sink, her eyes wide open, and, with her back against the wall, she slid down until she was sitting upon the floor.  Her arms relaxed and hung limp at her sides, letting the book topple over in her lap, and she sat motionless.

One of her feet protruded from her skirt, and the leaping firelight illumined it ruddily.  It was a graceful foot in an old shoe which had been re-soled and patched.  It seemed very still, that patched shoe, as if it might stay still forever.  Hedrick knew that Laura had not fainted, but he wished she would move her foot.

He went away.  He went into the owl-room again, and stood there silently a long, long time.  Then he stole back again toward the library door, but caught a glimpse of that old, motionless shoe through the doorway as he came near.  Then he spied no more.  He went out to the stable, and, secluding himself in his studio, sat moodily to meditate.

Something was the matter.  Something had gone wrong.  He had thrown a bomb which he had expected to go off with a stupendous bang, leaving him, as the smoke cleared, looking down in merry triumph, stinging his fallen enemies with his humour, withering them with satire, and inquiring of them how it felt, now they were getting it.  But he was decidedly untriumphant:  he wished Laura had moved her foot and that she hadn’t that patch upon her shoe.  He could not get his mind off that patch.  He began to feel very queer:  it seemed to be somehow because of the patch.  If she had worn a pair of new shoes that morning. . . .  Yes, it was that patch.

Thirteen is a dangerous age:  nothing is more subtle.  The boy, inspired to play the man, is beset by his own relapses into childhood, and Hedrick was near a relapse.

By and by, he went into the house again, to the library.  Laura was not there, but he found the fire almost smothered under heaping ashes.  She had burned her book.

He went into the room where the piano was, and played “The Girl on the Saskatchewan” with one finger; then went out to the porch and walked up and down, whistling cheerily.

After that, he went upstairs and asked Miss Peirce how his father was “feeling,” receiving a noncommital reply; looked in at Cora’s room; saw that his mother was lying asleep on Cora’s bed and Cora herself examining the contents of a dressing-table drawer; and withdrew.  A moment later, he stood in the passage outside Laura’s closed door listening.  There was no sound.