As she dropped from the gap into the road beneath, she became aware that somebody a good deal smaller than herself was going to do the same thing on the other side of the road. Through a thin hedge topping a high grassy bank appeared, first, two small kicking legs, and then something fat and roundabout in blue, surmounted by a crop of red curls. Sydney’s dash forward was not a bit too soon, for the creature rolled down the bank at a prodigious pace, alighting fortunately in her arms. It wriggled from her in a moment, and regained its feet. Then Sydney saw that it was a round-faced, red-haired little boy, dressed in a navy blue serge smock, just now extremely muddy.
He stopped to pull on the wet strapped shoe which the mud in the ditch had nearly sucked from his foot, pulled down his belt about his bunchy little petticoats, and observed affably, “Hullo, big girl!”
“You have scratched your face, dear, getting through that hedge,” Sydney said, looking him over; “doesn’t it hurt you?”
The small boy beamed all over in a condescending smile.
“Scwatches don’t hurt boys!” he assured her, with a strong emphasis upon the last word.
“What is your name, dear?” she asked him.
“I’m Pauly Seaton,” he explained confidentially, “and I’m going to be five quite soon. Big girl, shall we go home now, ’cause I’m daddy’s boy, and he doesn’t like me to be lostened?”
He put his hand into Sydney’s quite confidingly. “But where do you live, Pauly dear?” she asked.
“Vicarwidge, of course,” he said; “come on, big girl!”