Still, he had a rather hard day on Sunday. His mother was coldly severe and captious. Once she said:
"I can't bear to look at you, you are so disfigured! If that is what your father calls style——" and she shook her head disapprovingly.
He went to church and Sunday-school, and then his father took him up to Tompkins Square for a walk. It seemed as if they had never been acquainted before. Why, his father was real jolly. And it was a nice week at school after the boys got done asking him "Who his Barber was?" He could see the big B they put to it.
On Saturday afternoon Mrs. Reed had to go out shopping with a cousin. She was an excellent shopper. She could find flaws, and beat down, and get a spool of cotton or a piece of tape thrown in. When Charles came home from singing-school he was to go over to the Deans and play in the back yard. He was not to be out on the sidewalk at all.
They were going to have a splendid time. Elsie and Florence Hay would bring their dolls. Even Josie envied the pretty names, though she confessed to Hanny that she didn't think Hay was nice, because it made you think of "hay, straw, oats" on the signs at the feed stores. But the girls were very sweet and pleasant. Nora had come in with the cat dressed in one of her own long baby frocks.
Hanny ran in to get her doll. It was still her choice possession, and had been named and unnamed. Her mother began to think she was too big to play with dolls, but Margaret had made it such a pretty wardrobe.
Ben sat at the front basement window reading. Mr. and Mrs. Underhill had gone up to see Miss Lois, who was far from well. Margaret was out on "professional rounds," which Ben thought quite a suggestive little phrase. Martha was scrubbing and of course he couldn't talk to her. He had cut the side of his foot with a splinter of glass, and his mother would not allow him to put on his shoe.
Hanny brought down her doll. Ben looked rather wistfully at her.
"I wish you'd come in too. We're going to have such a nice time," she said in a soft tone.
"I'd look fine playing with dolls."