"My dear child—" began Mrs. Marsh expostulatingly; but Edgar interrupted her:
"Oh, mother, don't fuss!"
"I merely speak for your good, my darling, I—"
"I do wish you wouldn't keep on calling me 'dearie' and 'darling' and names of that sort; it's so silly, just as though I was a baby, and it makes people laugh, and I hate being laughed at!" The boy spoke petulantly with deepening colour, but his eyes drooped beneath his mother's reproachful glance. "I don't believe Roger's mother would be so foolish," he added, "and Roger says you treat me as though I was a girl."
Mrs. Marsh looked both hurt and angry, but she made no response. Her affection for her son showed itself in words of exaggerated endearment, and he was now of an age to greatly dislike being made to appear ridiculous. It had been at his father's wish that he had been entered as a pupil at the Grammar School; Mrs. Marsh had wanted to have him educated by a tutor at home, but her husband had been too wise to listen to her views on the point of their son's education. Edgar should go to a public school, he had firmly declared, the boy would soon find his level there; and that he was certainly doing, the process proving rather a humbling one. Master Edgar Marsh was not quite such an important person in his own estimation to-day as he had been at the commencement of the school only a few weeks previously.
"I walked as far as the corner of Princess Street with Roger this afternoon," Edgar informed his mother by-and-by. "I should not like to live where he does, I told him so."
"What did he say?" asked Mrs. Marsh curiously.
"He didn't say anything, but he got very red and looked angry. He very soon gets angry, you know, and I don't think he liked what I said."
"I thought you told me the other day that you didn't care for Roger, and that you never meant to speak to him again," Mrs. Marsh observed with a slight smile.
"Oh," the little boy exclaimed, appearing somewhat confused, "that was because he hit me; but—but it was partly my fault for—never mind about that! Afterwards he said he was sorry, and we've been better friends since. Roger's all right when you come to know him."