The door was opened, and he was bundled unceremoniously into the kitchen.

Then Ephraim Shine--for it was the superintendent who had fallen upon Dick in the darkness--thrust his sparsely-whiskered, leathery face into the well-lighted room, and said shortly: 'Your boy, ma'am!' Shine withdrew instantly, closing the door noiselessly after him, and left Dick flushed and furious.
'He didn't take me,' he cried.

'I was comin' home, an' he grabbed me just outside there--the beast! Dick stopped short, suddenly conscious of the presence of visitors.

Mrs.
Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace--the tall, white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the books provided by the chapel library.

At the table sat Gable, the grey, chubby-faced third-class scholar whom Joel Ham had forgiven because of his extreme youth.