“Ah!” said the boy, evidently understanding this. He smiled, and the children saw his enormous, jutting-out teeth, which gave him a very queer look. “My name it ees - Napoleon Bonaparte.”
There was a silence after this extraordinary statement. The children didn’t know what to think. Was the boy called after Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous Frenchman - or was he pulling their legs?
The boy walked across the room, limping badly. Bets wondered what he had done to his leg.
“Is your leg bad?” she asked sympathetically. To her horror the boy fished out a very dirty handkerchief and burst into floods of tears. He muttered strings and strings of French-sounding words into his handkerchief, whilst the others stared at him in discomfort, not in the least knowing what to do.
Mrs. Hilton put her head into the room again to see how the children were getting on with their new friend. She was simply horrified to see him apparently in floods of tears.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “What have you been doing to the boy?”
“Nothing,” said the children indignantly. “I only just asked him about his bad leg,” added Bets.
The boy gave a loud howl, limped across the room to the door, pushed by the distressed Mrs. Hilton, and disappeared down the stairs. “Ah, ma jambe, ma jambe!” he wailed as he went.
“What’s jambe?” asked Bets, bewildered.
“Leg. He’s yelling out, ‘Oh, my leg, my leg!’ ” said Pip. “He’s mad, I think.”