"Don't cry, Mary, don't cry, please. I like you. Tell me you know I do. I'm going to do something, I'm going to help you somehow. I'll never touch another egg unless you do too, and if he stops mine, I'll write to Uncle Vivian and tell him why. I shall ask Uncle Vivian to let me go somewhere else as soon as I can; but you must get away first, you must ask your Grandmother to have you back with her right away. Mary dear, don't cry."
He was on the border line himself. He screwed a dirty little handkerchief into his eyes. The other arm was still on my shoulder. He was crying too. Then I comforted him, and found it a joy greater even than being comforted.
"We must go now," I said, getting up. "Come on, Master Robert," smiling; smiling being a thing I achieved perhaps once a year.
"No, and don't say Robert either. Say Robbie. Uncle Vivian and all the people I like call me that."
There were two pairs of red eyes at the tea table that night, and one pair of steel blue ones which observed them. From that moment, the political situation of No. 1 the Quay was entirely transformed. In the field of domestic economy there was a more striking change still. Next morning, I almost reeled when a boiled egg was set before me, though as the porridge was cut down by nearly half, my Uncle spiced his defeat with triumph. Openly he treated me no worse, though he gave me a savage kick in the hall that night. I knew he was saving up for something dreadful. Once the mood of passion and defiance had passed away, I was more afraid of him than ever. He hated Robbie now, while striving not to show it. Robbie showed his feelings sometimes and was openly surly. The short-lived Albert-Mary entente collapsed once for all, shattered by the Mary-Robert alliance.
The new friendship caused a veritable revolution in all my ideas. Now, whenever I was brooding or thinking away in my usual bitter fashion, I would say to myself, "Think of it, quickly, quickly," and I would feel again his hand on my shoulder; he would comfort me and I him. I re-lived it over and over again. It was the first purely happy vision I had ever conjured up. To Robbie it meant much less. I decided he was a nice little boy, kind and decent-hearted; he had been sorry to see me unhappy and he had been glad to comfort me. It was an impulse; not more. He liked me, he pitied me, but the whole thing meant very little to him.
One day a letter came from his Uncle Vivian.
He came to me joyfully. "Hurrah! Hurrah! I shall be going away soon. I'm ever so glad."
"In every way?" with a sneer; hungrily.
He flushed crimson, as we do when any one surprises us in thoughtless egotism; when another lays bare to us a selfishness we were too selfish to have seen. Or else it was the cruel injustice of what I said, or both: the good reason and the bad.