The next morning at breakfast-time father had not come back, and mother said a lot of things that made Jack feel very uncomfortable.  She herself had taught him that any one who said bad things about his father was wicked, but now it seemed that she was trying to tell him something about father that was not nice.  She spoke so slowly that he hardly understood a word she said, though he gathered that father had stolen something, and would be put in prison if he was caught.  With a guilty pang he remembered his own dealings with his money-box, and he determined to throw away the rest of the sweets when, nobody was looking.  Then mother made the astounding statement that he was not to go to school that day, but his sudden joy was checked a little when she said he was not to go out at all, except into the back garden.  It seemed to Jack that he must be ill, but when he made this suggestion to mother, she gave up her explanations with a sigh.  Afterwards she kept on saying aloud, “I must think, I must think!” She said it so often that Jack started keeping count on his fingers.

The day went slowly enough, for the garden was wet after the thunderstorm, and mother would not play any games.  Just before tea-time two gentlemen called and talked to mother in the parlour, and after a while they sent for Jack to answer some questions about father, though mother was there all the time.  They seemed nice gentlemen, but mother did not ask them to stop to tea, as Jack expected.  He thought that perhaps she was sorry that she had not done so, for she was very sad all tea-time, and let him spread his own bread and jam.  When tea was over things were very dull, and at last Jack started crying because there was nothing else to do.  Presently he heard a little noise and found that mother was crying as well.  This seemed to him so extraordinary that he stopped crying to watch her; the tears ran down her cheeks very quickly, and she kept on wiping them away with her handkerchief, but if she held her handkerchief to her eyes perhaps they would not be able to come out at all.  It occurred to him that possibly she was sorry she had said, wicked things about father, and to comfort her, for it made him feel fidgety to see her cry, he whispered to her that he would not tell.  But she stared at him hopelessly through her red eyelids, and he felt that he had not said the right thing.  She called him her poor boy, and yet it appeared that he was not ill.  It was all very mysterious and uncomfortable, and it would be a good thing when father came back and everything went on as before, even though he had to go back to school.