I

“Don’t you, Charley?”

The boy looked doggedly at the river. They were at Millbank, and the river rolled on their left. His sister gently touched him on the shoulder, and pointed to it.

“Any compensation⁠—restitution⁠—never mind the word, you know my meaning. Father’s grave.”

But he did not respond with any tenderness. After a moody silence he broke out in an ill-used tone:

“It’ll be a very hard thing, Liz, if, when I am trying my best to get up in the world, you pull me back.”

“I, Charley?”

“Yes, you, Liz. Why can’t you let bygones be bygones? Why can’t you, as Mr. Headstone said to me this very evening about another matter, leave well alone? What we have got to do, is, to turn our faces full in our new direction, and keep straight on.”

“And never look back? Not even to try to make some amends?”

“You are such a dreamer,” said the boy, with his former petulance. “It was all very well when we sat before the fire⁠—when we looked into the hollow down by the flare⁠—but we are looking into the real world, now.”

“Ah, we were looking into the real world then, Charley!”

“I understand what you mean by that, but you are not justified in it. I don’t want, as I raise myself to shake you off, Liz. I want to carry you up with me. That’s what I want to do, and mean to do. I know what I owe you. I said to Mr. Headstone this very evening, ‘After all, my sister got me here.’ Well, then. Don’t pull me back, and hold me down. That’s all I ask, and surely that’s not unconscionable.”