"Do you know my aunt?"
"Rather not. We're not rich people living in a big house, with servants to wait on us, and everything we want! We're poor!"
There was a note of bitterness in Tom's voice, of which he was scarcely conscious himself, but Peter heard it, and replied sympathetically: "It must be dreadful to be poor—to be short, perhaps, of even food, and clothes, and—"
"Oh, I didn't mean we were so poor as that," Tom interrupted, crimsoning, and aghast at the false impression he had evidently given. "I meant—why, what's this?"
The other boy had stepped close to him and had slipped something— a shilling it proved to be—into his hand, murmuring that he was so sorry for him and that he wanted him to have the money to buy something for himself.
Tom looked at the coin in amazed silence for a minute, the hot colour slowly receding from his cheeks in his shame; them amazement and shame gave place to anger, and he flung the shilling in the road at his companion's feet.
"Pick it up from there, if you want it!" he cried wrathfully. "I don't know what you can think of me! Get out of my way and let me pass!"
"Oh, wait, wait!" cried Peter Perry, seemingly much distressed.
But Tom pushed him roughly aside, and, followed by Tim, who was now in a chastened frame of mind, strode off at a great rate in the direction of his home, his heart hot with anger against the boy who, he considered, had insulted him.
"I shan't tell them about it at home," he decided; "for I suppose I oughtn't to have said we were poor. But, oh! how was it he didn't see I wasn't the sort of boy to take money? How could he have made such a mistake?"