“Perhaps he is over there,” he suggested.
“Perhaps he is,” she replied, and added, shyly, “Are you waiting for anyone?”
He frowned so darkly at first, that she was quite alarmed and wished that she had run away as she had at first intended; but he answered, after a pause:
“No—yes;” he said, “yes—I’m waiting for my father.”
He did not even speak as the boys at the Cross-roads spoke. His voice had a clear, soft ring, and his mode of pronunciation was one Tom had spent much time in endeavouring to impress upon herself as being more desirable than that she had heard most commonly used around her. Up to this time she had frequently wondered why she must speak differently from Mornin and Molly Hollister, but now she suddenly began to appreciate the wisdom of his course. It was very much nicer to speak as the boy spoke.
“I haven’t any father,” she ventured, “or any mother. That’s queer, isn’t it?” And as she said it, Mrs. Sparkes’s words rushed into her mind again, and she looked up the street towards the sunset and fell into a momentary reverie, whispering them to herself.
“What’s that you are saying?” asked the boy.
She looked at him with a rather uncertain and troubled expression.
“It was only what they said in there,” she replied, pointing towards the dining-room.
“What did they say?”