“I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa—and Lottie stays there too now—she's my cousin: where d'you live?”
“Oh, I live close by—right on that big green square where I guess the nurse takes you once in a while,” said Billy patronizingly. Then, looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, “I never saw you out there.”
“No, Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and I've just come to visit him.”
“Say, will you come and play with me some time?” chimed in the inextinguishable Jimmy. “I've got a cooking stove—for real fire—and blocks and a ball with a string.”
Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battest among the I. G. B. B. C, or “Infant Giants,” smiled from that altitude upon Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room over Pickwick, with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of Daniel. I called “Come in!” and, entering with a slow dejected air, he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head again to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke myself.
“You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?”
“I don't feel very well, uncle.”
“What's the matter, my boy?”
“Oh—ah—I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you.”