She abruptly introduced her errand.
“I have come to talk about your bird. I took a fancy to him last night, and I want to know what you’ll sell him for.”
“Oh!” It was a frightened, pitiful little cry, and, all in an instant, Doodles’s face matched it. “I—don’t want to sell him—I wouldn’t sell him for anything!”
The woman laughed, a cold, hateful laugh that flashed fear through the boy’s heart.
“I guess you will,”—she winked coaxingly,—“when you know what I’ll pay for him. I’ll give you twenty dollars! Just think, tw-en-ty bright silver dollars!”
She smiled quite as if the matter were settled, but there was no response on the scared white face opposite. Doodles looked straight past her to the cluster of faded red roses on the wall paper back of her chair.
“Tw-en-ty beautiful bright silver dollars!” she reiterated in a wheedling tone.
“I don’t want to sell him!” Doodles insisted firmly, his eyes still on the roses.
“Well, now,” she resumed, “I know you’re a sensible little boy, and you listen while I tell you how it looks to me. I understand that your mother is in rather straitened circumstances, being just out of the hospital, and not very well, and all. So, you see, twenty dollars would help her wonderfully. Of course, you love her dearly, better than anything else in the whole world, don’t you?”
Doodles bowed his head miserably.