But that he knew precisely what he was leaving behind, or what
he was going forth to meet, would be saying too much. One thing he did
know: that Miss Vilda had said distinctly that two was one too many, and
that he was the objectionable unit referred to. And in addition to this
he had more than once heard that very day that nobody in Pleasant River
wanted him, but that there would be plenty of homes open to Gay if he
were safely out of the way. A little allusion to a Home, which he caught
when he was just bringing in a four-leafed clover to show to Samantha,
completed the stock of ideas from which he reasoned. He was very clear
on one point, and that was that he would never be taken alive and put in
a Home with a capital H. He respected Homes, he approved of them, for
other boys, but personally they were unpleasant to him, and he had no
intention of dwelling in one if he could help it. The situation did not
appear utterly hopeless in his eyes. He had his original dollar and
eighty-five cents in money; Rags and he had supped like kings off wild
blackberries and hard gingerbread; and, more than all, he was young and
mercifully blind to all but the immediate present. Yet even in taking
the most commonplace possible view of his character it would be folly to
affirm that he was anything but unhappy. His soul was not sustained by
the consciousness of having done a self-forgetting and manly act, for he
was not old enough to have such a consciousness, which is something the
good God gives us a little later on, to help us over some of the hard
places.
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