“Did anybody ever see so cute a child as he!”
Then she remembered the visitors and with the truest hospitality proffered them the broken loaf.
“I ought to have given it to you the first, I know that, but he’d have yelled constant if I hadn’t tended him. It’s wonderful, I think, how he knows that bell!”
“Wonderful!” echoed the Gray Gentleman, as he bowed and gravely broke a tiny portion from the small stale loaf.
Bonny-Gay was going to decline, but when she saw the Gray Gentleman’s action, she checked her “No, I thank you” unspoken and also accepted a crumbly crust. After which Mary Jane distributed several other bits among some clamorous charges and finally sat down with the last morsel to enjoy that herself in their presence.
“I think dinner never tastes so good as it does out-doors here, in our park,” she remarked with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Dinner!” cried Bonny-Gay and looked into the Gray Gentleman’s face. But from something she saw there she was warned to say no more; and she made a brave effort to swallow her own crust without letting her entertainer see how distasteful a matter it was.
After this the Gray Gentleman saw a cloud arising and though he did not fear a shower for himself he was anxious that Bonny-Gay should take no harm from her unusual outing. So he called the coachman to bring up the carriage and had Mary Jane and the baby lifted in. Then Bonny-Gay sprang after them, and the master himself made his adieux to the teachers and followed, watched by the admiring, maybe envious, glances of many bright eyes.
However, one carriage, no matter how capacious, cannot hold a whole kindergarten, and neither could it carry the pleasant “Playgrounds” away; so if there was any envy it did not last long. Which was a good thing, too, seeing what happened so soon afterward.
The landau had not progressed far toward Dingy street and Mary Jane was still wearing the feather-trimmed hat, which her new friend had persuaded her to put on just to surprise Mrs. Bump, when there came a rush, a bark, a series of shrieks, and the high-spirited horses were off at a mad gallop; which grew wilder and wilder, and soon passed quite beyond control of coachman or even the Gray Gentleman, who had promptly seized the reins as they fell from the driver’s hands, but had been powerless to do more than retain them in his tightly clutched fingers.