Hugh Price read in the face of the child hate, and inwardly realized that there was a struggle in the near future which might end in the death of one or the other; but if those forebodings were in his mind, he did not let the boy see them, and in a voice quite calm and intended to be gentle, he said: "Go away, Robert, until you are more reasonable." Robert Stevens might have been improved for his whole life by a single kind word at that moment; but the haughty cavalier would not bow to the will of any one, much less to the boy he already hated.

A word of encouragement, explanation, pity for his childish ignorance, of reassurance that his mother's roof was to be his home, might have made him really dutiful.
On his way out he heard a sob, and, going into his mother's room, found her on her knees weeping bitterly.

Tenderly he wound his arms around that weak mother, whom he loved with all the fervency of his young soul, and his own tears mingled with hers.

They were in this position when Hugh Price, on his way to mount his horse, paused a single instant to gaze on the scene, and then, muttering something about weakness of women, added an oath and hurried from the house.
When he was gone, Dorothe rose from her knees and, clasping Robert in her arms, cried: "Oh, Robert, I heard it all!" "Mother, I mean it!" he answered.
"No, no; for my sake, promise me you will not, Robert." "Mother," said the boy, "my own father never struck me a blow.

He who had the right to punish me never found it necessary, and he shall not." Dearly as Robert loved his mother, he would not yield to Hugh Price.