Oswald did not know what to say, so he got out his new pen-and-pencil-combined and said—
"Look here! You can have this to keep if you like."
The pale-eyed boy took it and looked at it and said—
"You ain't foolin' me?"
And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt most awfully rum and uncomfy, and though he wanted most frightfully to do something for the boy he felt as if he wanted to get away more than anything else, and he never was gladder in his life than when he saw Dora coming along, and she said—
"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired and I'd like to sit down a bit."
She got the boy to sit down beside her, and Oswald went back to the others.
Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away, and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been crying.
It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good, but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior thoughts.
And the next day she was but little better.