Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/78

 "M-m-m!" said the judge.

"I think I know a little, sir," said Tommie, "but I thought you would not like me to ask you if it was true or not."

"What do you know, Tommie?" asked the judge. "What have you heard?"

It was very hard for the boy to say it.

"I heard that I wasn't anybody," he said slowly. "Somebody tried to joke me about it—and since then nobody has felt like saying anything about it."

Judge Tyler was unable to suppress a grim chuckle. Then he said gravely: "To me you've been everything, Tommie—just everything."

"Never mind the rest, then," said Beauling; "it doesn't matter. I've always sort of known that I had no—that my mother wasn't married."

"And you never told me, Tommie?"

"Well, I thought it over, sir, and lay awake nights and felt bad about it, and then it struck me that I'd better feel bad about the things that were my fault, and not bother about the things that were other people's faults."