He loved her but he was glad when the door closed behind her so that he could think it all out for himself in the dark—­the dear dark that he had always loved so well and that was now as balm to his bruised spirit.  The worst of it was that he could not disown John Allan as a father.  He had to confess to himself with renewed bitterness that he was indeed, and by no fault of his own—­a helpless dependent upon the charity of this man who had, in taunting him with the fact, wounded him so grievously.  His impulse was to run away—­but where could he go?  Though his small purse held at that moment a generous amount of spending money for a boy “going on twelve,” it would be a mere nothing toward taking him anywhere.  It would not afford him shelter and food for a day, and he knew it—­it would not take him to the only place where he knew he had kindred—­Baltimore.  And what if he could get as far as Baltimore, would he care to go there?  To assert his independence of the charity of John Allan only to throw himself upon the charity of relatives who had never noticed him—­whom he hated because they had never forgiven his father for marrying the angel mother around whose memory his fondest dreams clung?

No, he could not disown Mr. Allan—­not yet; but the good things of life received from his hands had henceforth lost their flavor and would be like Dead Sea fruit upon his lips.  Hitherto, though he knew, of course, that he was not the Allans’ own child, he had never once been made to feel that he was any the less entitled to their bounty.  They had adopted him of their own free will to fill the empty arms of a woman with a mother’s heart who had never been a mother, and that woman had lavished upon him almost more than a mother’s love—­certainly more than a prudent mother’s indulgence.  He had been the most spoiled and petted child of his circle, and the bounty had been heaped upon him in a manner that made him feel—­child though he was—­the joy that the giving brought the giver, and therefore no burden of obligation upon himself in receiving.  If Mr. Allan had been strict to a point of harshness with him, at times, Mr. Allan was a born disciplinarian—­it seemed natural for him to be stern and unsympathetic and those who knew him best took his stiffness and hardness with many grains of allowance, remembering his upright life and his open-handed charities.  He had administered punishment upon the little lad when he was naughty in the years before he went away to school, and the little lad had taken his medicine philosophically like other naughty boys—­had cried lustily, then dried his eyes and forgotten all about it in the pleasure which the goodies and petting he always had from his pretty, tender-hearted foster-mother at such times gave him.  But this was different.  He was a big lad now—­very big and old, he felt, far too big to be flogged; quite big enough to visit his mother’s grave, if he chose, without having to talk about it.  And he had not only been flogged because he would not reveal his sacred, sweet secret, but had had his dependence upon charity thrown up at him!