Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/34

The Loom of Destiny own son. But it was all lost on Dinney. He squirmed and was unhappy.

"What is it, dear? Are you not well?" she asked, with a real and beautiful tenderness. Dinney was silent.

"Are you not happy here, dear?" the little woman asked once more, putting all the pent-up love of her childless life in one mother's kiss on the boy's flushed forehead.

It was too much! Dinney broke loose and sprang away like a young tiger.

"Gordammit! lee' me alone!" he screamed; "lee' me alone!" His face was contorted with a sort of blind fury. "I'm sick of all dis muggin', an' dis place, an—an everyt'ing else, and I want to go home, see! I want to go home—I want to go home!"

He wailed it out, over and over again, and the tears streamed down his face.

"But—but, Dinney, are n't you happy here?"

"No, I ain't," almost shrieked the child, in a passion of homesickness, "an' I'm tired o' dis bloody place, an' I want to go home—I want to go home!" 22