A little girl, with a mop of unruly brown hair escaping from a quaint sun-bonnet, was still sitting in the car and regarding the scene with big awestruck eyes. In a moment she jumped out and approached Bobby. She was only half a head taller than he was, and now gazed at him with soft, sweet grey eyes.
'Poor little boy!' she said. 'What's your name?'
'I'm not a poor boy,' said Bobby with head erect; 'me and Nobbles will be walking on, for we're in a partic'lar hurry.'
A sudden panic had seized him that this gentleman might take him home again; he had a great dislike to be the centre of a crowd, and the cattle-drovers were all surrounding him now, gesticulating and talking loudly. And Bobby was rather shy of other children; he generally felt strangely antagonistic towards them. This little girl's gentle pity, and her desire to know his name, frightened and annoyed him.
He turned his back upon her and hurried off, with very little idea of the danger from which he had been saved. But he had not gone a hundred yards before, to his consternation, he met John, the groom, driving back from the town in the dogcart. He pulled up instantly.
'Why, Master Bobby, you ain't by yourself all this way from home?'
'Me and Nobbles are here,' said the small boy with dignity.
It did not take John long to get out and lift the little runaway up to the seat beside him, and Bobby was soon being driven home with a crestfallen unhappy face.
'Everybodies always stops me when I want to do fings!' he complained to Nurse when she took him to task for being so naughty.
And Nurse was so angry with him that she made him stand in the corner till teatime.