I grew very fond of Mr. Wood, and even of his thin little wife, who occasionally flitted into the room after we had finished.  I fully intended to keep up with them in after life, but I never did.  I forgot them completely....

My parents were not wholly easy in their minds concerning me; they were bewildered by the new aspect I presented.  For my lately acquired motive was strong enough to compel me to restrict myself socially, and the evenings I spent at home were given to study, usually in my own room.  Once I was caught with a Latin grammar:  I was just “looking over it,” I said.  My mother sighed.  I knew what was in her mind; she had always been secretly disappointed that I had not been sent to college.  And presently, when my father went out to attend a trustee’s meeting, the impulse to confide in her almost overcame me; I loved her with that affection which goes out to those whom we feel understand us, but I was learning to restrain my feelings.  She looked at me wistfully....  I knew that she would insist on telling my father, and thus possibly frustrate my plans.  That I was not discovered was due to a certain quixotic twist in my father’s character.  I was working now, and though not actually earning my own living, he no longer felt justified in prying into my affairs.

When June arrived, however, my tutor began to show signs that his conscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum.  The joke had gone far enough, he implied.  My intentions, indeed, he found praiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father were informed of them; he was determined to call at my father’s office.

The next morning was blue with the presage of showers; blue, too, with the presage of fate.  An interminable morning.  My tasks had become utterly distasteful.  And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make out invoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers, my mind now exalted by hope, now depressed by anxiety.  The result of an interview perhaps even now going on would determine whether or no I should be immediately released from a slavery I detested.  Would Mr. Wood persuade my father?  If not, I was prepared to take more desperate measures; remain in the grocery business I would not.  In the evening, as I hurried homeward from the corner where the Boyne Street car had dropped me, I halted suddenly in front of the Peters house, absorbing the scene where my childhood had been spent:  each of these spreading maples was an old friend, and in these yards I had played and dreamed.  An unaccountable sadness passed over me as I walked on toward our gate; I entered it, gained the doorway of the house and went upstairs, glancing into the sitting room.  My mother sat by the window, sewing.  She looked up at me with an ineffable expression, in which I read a trace of tears.

“Hugh!” she exclaimed.

I felt very uncomfortable, and stood looking down at her.