Poppet understood him a little—no one else. He was at perpetual enmity with his father, who had no patience with him at all. Esther excused him by saying he was at the hobbledehoy stage, and would grow up all right; but she was always too busy to help him to grow. Meg’s hands were full with Pip; and Nell, after a try or two to win his confidence, had pronounced him a larrikin, undeserving of sisters at all.
So Poppet undertook him. She was a faithful little soul, and in some strange way just fitted into him, despite his awkward angles.
[18]
]Sometimes he would tell her things, and go to a great deal of trouble to do something she particularly wanted; but then again he would bully her unmercifully, and make her life not worth living.
“Why don’t you play cricket, or do something, John?” Meg said, snipping off an end of cotton very energetically. “I hate to see a great boy like you sprawling on a sofa doing nothing.”
“Do you?” said John.
“What made you so late home from school? it’s nearly teatime. I hope it wasn’t detention again.”
“It was,” said John.
“Oh, Bunty, that means Saturday taken again, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” John rolled over, and lay on his other side, his eyes shut.
“Bunty, why don’t you try?” Meg said; “you are always in scrapes for something. Pip never got in half so many, and yet he wasn’t a model boy. Will you promise me to try next week?”