“I should get inside it altogether, if I were you,” suggested Dick.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Dodo, beginning to cry. “It’s bad enough to—to—have one’s gloves car—carrying on in this fas-fashion, without being laughed at by—by a parcel of cre—creatures that don’t care anything about their per—per—personal appearance, and who—who nev—never wore a p—p—pair of gloves in their lives!”
“Oh!” cried Marjorie, “I’m sure we wear gloves when we are at home, don’t we, Dick?”
“Of course,” said he.
“And me, too,” declared Fidge; “me wears goves.”
“I don’t believe it,” sobbed the Dodo; “and if I did, I wouldn’t, so there!”
“I think you are an awful cry-baby,” said Dick; “I should be ashamed, if I were you, to be always sniveling about nothing.”
The Dodo didn’t answer, but sat down beside the enormous glove, and continued to sob and cry till his eyes, which were never very beautiful, became swollen and red, and his little lace handkerchief was wringing wet with his tears.
Marjorie, in her kind-hearted way, tried to comfort him, and privately suggested to Dick that, as the poor bird seemed so very much cut up about his glove, that he should restore it to its natural size again.
This, however, Dick positively refused to do for the present, and the Dodo becoming worse instead of better, the Archæopteryx said he should go and fetch a doctor.