In spite of love, however, the boy felt somewhat as a discharged criminal is supposed to feel. He did not know where to go, or what to do. The prohibition of the society of other boys had been strengthened by new and stringent clauses. Jack could not very well seek out girls to play with, unless he chose to run the risk of being laughed at, and being suspected of fickleness by nice little Mattie Barker. His recent conversations with his mother had not been of a variety of which he wanted more, his father was pleasant enough of speech—when not pre-occupied—but he would persist in affixing a moral or a warning to every sentence he spoke, and though Jack felt sure that no person living had a higher regard for moral applications than himself, he did not care to have them in everything. His father liked butter, as was proper enough, but did he mix it with everything he put in his mouth—cake, coffee, fruit, etc.? Jack rather thought not.
Perhaps the doctor had never heard of the pope's bull against the comet and its impotence, or he might have evolved a moral application for his own use, in the matter of prohibiting Jack from associating with other boys. No matter how earnestly the world, in the time of the pope alluded to, expressed its objections to associating with comets, the comet came right along as straight as a due deference to solar control would allow. And the order of seclusion imposed upon Jack did not make him any the less yearned after by his late playmates. It began to be noticed, by boys of observing habits, that the youth of Doveton were falling into ruts, and showing no inclination to depart from them; that there was nothing particular to do; that the procession of games, each according to its season, was lapsing into irregularity; that nobody got up anything new, and the only plausible reason seemed to be the absence of Jack. In a general convention of boys it was agreed, with but two dissenting voices—those of the jugged loafer and the buttonless Pinkshaw twin—that what society needed was to have Jack resume his place in it, and the two dissenters were informed that if they didn't make the vote unanimous they would find it advisable to move to the next town.