This brief respite gave them time to think the matter over, to wonder what the penalty would be, and to try to imagine where Dan would be sent.

He whistled briskly in his room, so that no one should think he cared a bit; but while he waited to know his fate, the longing to stay grew stronger and stronger, the more he recalled the comfort and kindness he had known here, the hardship and neglect he had felt elsewhere.

He knew they tried to help him, and at the bottom of his heart he was grateful, but his rough life had made him hard and careless, suspicious and wilful.

He hated restraint of any sort, and fought against it like an untamed creature, even while he knew it was kindly meant, and dimly felt that he would be the better for it.
He made up his mind to be turned adrift again, to knock about the city as he had done nearly all his life; a prospect that made him knit his black brows, and look about the cosy little room with a wistful expression that would have touched a much harder heart than Mr.Bhaer's if he had seen it.

It vanished instantly, however, when the good man came in, and said in his accustomed grave way, "I have heard all about it, Dan, and though you have broken the rules again, I am going to give you one more trial, to please Mother Bhaer." Dan flushed up to his forehead at this unexpected reprieve, but he only said in his gruff way, "I didn't know there was any rule about bull-fighting." "As I never expected to have any at Plumfield, I never did make such a rule," answered Mr.Bhaer, smiling in spite of himself at the boy's excuse.