understand. You fellows have got to get a story.
But you can't. I've been pardoned out, that's all. I'm here. That ends
it."

It didn't end it for them. They kept on proffering persuasive little
notes of interrogative sound, and possibly they advanced their claim to
be heard because they had their day's work to do.

"Sorry," said Jeff, yet not too curtly. "Yes, I did write for the prison
paper. Yes, it was in my hands. No, I hadn't the slightest intention of
over-turning any system. Reason for doing it? Why, because that's the
way the thing looked to me. Not on your life. I sha'n't write a word for
any paper. Sorry. Good-bye."

The front door closed. It had been standing wide, for it was a warm
morning, but Lydia could imagine he shut it now in a way to make more
certain his tormentors had gone. While he was out there her old sweet
sympathy came flooding back, but when he strode into the room and took
up his napkin again, she stole one glance at him and met his scowl and
didn't like him any more. The scowl wasn't for her. It was an
introspective scowl, born out of things he intimately knew and couldn't
communicate if he tried.

The colonel had looked quite radiantly happy that morning. Now his
colour had died down, leaving in his cheeks the clear pallor of age, and
his hands were trembling. It seemed that somebody had to speak, and he
did it, faintly.

"I hope you are not going to be pursued by that kind of thing."

"It's all in the day's work," said Jeffrey.

He was eating his breakfast with a careful attention to detail. Anne
thought he seemed like a painstaking child not altogether sure of his
manners. She thought, too, with her swift insight into the needs of man,
that he was horribly hungry. She was not, like Lydia, on the verge of
impulse all the time, but she broke out here, and then bit her lip:

"I don't believe you did have anything to eat last night."

Lydia gave a little jump in her chair. She didn't see how Anne dared
bait the scowling martyr. He looked at Anne. His scowl continued. They
began to see he perhaps couldn't smooth it out. But he smiled a little.

"Because I'm so hungry?" he asked. His voice sounded kind. "Well, I
didn't."

Lydia, now conversation had begun, wanted to be in it.

"Why not?" asked she, and Anne gave a little protesting note.

"I don't know," said Jeffrey, considering. "I didn't feel like it."

This he said awkwardly, but they all, with a rush of pity for him,
tho