With his habit of thinking twice, the boy asked nothing more. Having
asked nothing at the minute, he felt less inclined to ask anything as
they drove onward. Something within him rejected the burden of knowing.
While he would not hold himself aloof, he would not involve himself
more than events involved him according as they fell out. His reasoning
was obscure, but his instincts, grown self-protective from necessity,
were positive. Whatever had happened, whatever was to be right and
wrong to other people, his own motive must be loyalty.
"I've got to stick to him," he was saying to himself. "He's been awful
good to me. In a kind of a way he's my father. I must stand by him, and
see him through, just as if I was his son."
It was his first grown-up resolution.