"Ma! Bertie's been a naughty boy. He wouldn't sing 'Pretty Birdling' for Miss Smallbones. I told him you'd punish him, and you will, won't you, ma?"
As there was no response to this, the young ones came to the door of the sitting room and looked in. They stared at the stranger, and the stranger stared at them, with the unabashed frankness of young animals. Having stared their fill, the son and daughter of the house went off to ask about dinner.
To Tom that dinner was another new experience. For the first time in his life he sat down to what is known as a family meal. Attempts had sometimes been made by well-meaning women in the tenements to rope him to their tables, but his mother had never permitted him to yield to them. Now he sat down with those of his own age, to be served like them, and on some sort of footing of equality. The honor was so great that he could hardly swallow. Second helpings were beyond him.
The afternoon was blank again. "You'll begin to go to school on Monday," Mrs. Tollivant had explained; but in the meantime he had the hours to himself. They were long. He was lonely. Having been given permission to go into the yard, he stood studying the Plymouth Rocks. Presently he was conscious of a light step behind him. Before he had time to turn around he also heard a voice. It was a whiny voice, yet sharp and peremptory.
"You stop looking at our hens."
The fairy princess had not come up to him; she had paused some two or three yards away. Her expression was so haughty that it hurt him. It hurt him more from her than from anybody else because of his admiration. He looked at her beseechingly, not for permission to go on studying the Plymouth Rocks, but for some shade of relenting. He got none. The sharp little face was as glittering and cold as one of the icicles hanging from the roof behind her. Heavy at heart, he turned to go into the house by the back door.
He had climbed most of the hill when the clear, whiny voice arrested him.
"Who's a crook?"
At this stab in the back he leaped round, fury in his dark blue eyes. But the fairy princess was used to fury in dark blue eyes, and knew how best to defy it. The tip of the tongue she thrust out at him added insolence to insult. He turned again, and, wounded in all his being, went on into the house.
Near the back door there was a sun parlor, and in it he saw Bertie, squatting in a small-wheeled chair built for his convenience. Bertie called to him invitingly.