Now, as then, David experienced a softening of the heart. He forgot his resentment against his mother's coldness, against her strange passion for material things. She was his mother, she was all he had in the world, and he was going away from her and from his home. He heard her ascending the cellar steps, and he turned and went up to his room as though he had forgotten something, so that he might hide his tears. At the entrance of the little hall which led to his room, David stood still, the lump hardening in his throat, his breath drawn heavily. His errand to the preacher's had not taken half an hour, but in that half-hour his room had been dismantled. The cheap little bed had been taken apart and had been carried into the hall; the carpet had been dropped out of the window to the grass below; broom and scrubbing-brush and pail waited in the corner. The door of his mother's room opposite his own was closed; a dust cloth was stuffed under it so that no mote could enter. Now, all the rooms in Cassie's house except the kitchen and her own could be immaculate. For a long moment David stood still. He looked into his room, he looked at his mother's closed door, he looked at the door which shut off the deep front of the great house. He felt the same mysterious impression which Katy Gaumer felt when she looked at the outside of the Hartman house, as though it held within it strange secrets. It seemed now as though it thrust him forth as one who did not belong, as though its walls might presently contract until there should be no space for him to stand. It was a cruel suggestion to a boy about to leave his home! David breathed deeply as though to shake off the oppression, and then went down the steps. Without apparent emotion he bade Cassie farewell, then strode briskly toward the station. Essie Hill, who let him sit beside her on the doorstep and who argued prettily with him about his soul, was nowhere to be seen; his companions, Ollie Kuhns and Billy Knerr and the Fackenthals, were at work or at school; Bevy Schnepp, whose great favorite he was, was busy with her washing in the squire's yard far up the street. In the door of the store stood Katy Gaumer. Her, with Alvin Koehler, he hated. David had with his own eyes beheld one of Alvin's hasty departures from Grandmother Gaumer's gate. Persons found their levels in this world and Katy had found hers.