He looked so funny and so miserable I could not help laughing. "What!" you say with some surprise, "and you were crying a little while before?"
Yes, my dear child; yet I could laugh in spite of that, for, you know, there is no better way of drying our own tears than to wipe away the tears of another—though they be but the ready tears of a little child.
So I laughed, and I laughed very heartily too.
"Wait," I said. "I fancy Jack is as uncomfortable as you, and that looks to me very uncomfortable. Supposing we see if both you and he cannot get home in an easier fashion. Why don't you put him on the ground? I think if you were to walk back quietly Jack would follow you now."
My new acquaintance wrinkled his dirty little tear-stained countenance doubtfully.
"P'r'aps he'll run away, 'cause he's runned away often and often whilst he's been out with me, and I sha'n't be able to catch him," he said woefully.
"Put him down and see," I suggested. And Jack was dropped on the ground, though as much I fancy from necessity as choice, since his weight was evidently becoming too much for his master.
"Are you far from home?" I asked.
"A long, long way," he replied forlornly. "All the way from Skeffington."
"That's where I'm going," I said, "so we can go together."