"There!" he said. "I should knaw you arter all these years, Mum. Always making yourself twice the terror you are—and not meaning it."
CHAPTER XXXIII
BEAU-NEZ
He returned to the Moot to find little Alice crying in the door. A pathetic little shrimp of a creature she looked, huddled against the door-post, her face hidden, her shoulders quivering, her back to the hostile world. Some children who had been mocking her drew away on Ernie's approach.
"What's up, Lal?" he asked tenderly, bending over her.
She would not look up.
"It's nothing, daddy," she sobbed and crept away up the street, like a wounded animal.
Ernie went in. Ruth was sitting alone in the kitchen forlorn and wistful as he had never known her. It was clear to him that the sorrow, whatever it might be, was shared by mother and daughter. He watched her quietly for a minute; then came to her.
"What is it, mother?" he asked with unusual gentleness.
His tone touched the spring of tears in her heart. She bit her lip.