there's no harm done. With the necessity you will shake yourself free.
You can say, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty' with your lips and
in your heart, as I do, damned rot--damned rot.'"

He laughed, and in the lamplight Robert saw his face, puckered with an
impish, malicious merriment. Robert laughed too. So he had guessed
right. He felt proud and pleased.

"Good night, Stonehouse."

"Good night, sir."

Robert took off his battered cap politely as did other boys. Mr.
Ricardo scrambled into the 'bus with an unexpected agility, and from
the bright interior in which he sat a huddled, faceless shadow, he
waved. Robert waved back. A fresh rush of elation had lifted him out
of his sorrowful weariness. His disgrace had been miraculously turned
to a kind of secret triumph. He was different; but then, how
different! He didn't wear chains or a ring through his nose. He was
going to know things that no one else knew. And one day he would be
big and free.

5

It did not last. By the time he had dragged himself up to the top of
their stairs there was nothing left but hunger, the consciousness of
tattered, blood-stained clothes, and a sore, tired body. After all, he
was only a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, and had
been cast out. Even Mr. Ricardo could never make them play with him.

It was dark in the sitting-room. Against the grey, ghostly light of
the window he could see Christine bowed over her typewriter. She was
so still that she frightened him. All the terrors of night which lay
in wait for him ever since his fathers dead hand had touched his door
and opened it, rushed down upon him with a sweep of black, smothering
wings. He called out "Christine! Christine!" in a choked voice, and
she moved at once, and he saw her profile, sharp-drawn and unfamiliar.

"Is that you, Robert? What is it, dear?"

So she had not been worrying about him at all. She did not know that
it was long past their usual supper-time. She had been thinking of
something else. It made her seem a terrifyingly long way off, and he
shuffled across the room to her, and touched her to make sure of her.
And it was strange that her hand glided over him anxiously,
questioningly, as though in the darkness she too had been afraid and
uncertain.

"Your form-master, Mr. Ricardo, has been here. We've been talking
about you. Is your coat very, very torn?"

"Not--not very."

"Never mind. I'll mend it af