“Has anyone been going for you lately?” he asked.
Baltimore shook his head.
“I wish I was dead,” he replied.
This seemed melodramatic.
“Oh, you’ll be all right soon,” said Jeremy.
But he could get nothing out of him. Some of the boy’s loneliness seemed to penetrate his own spirit.
“I say, you can be as much with me as you like, you know,” he remarked awkwardly.
Baltimore nodded his head and moved away.
Bitterly was Jeremy to regret that word of his. It was as though Baltimore had laid a trap for him, pretending loneliness in order to secure that invitation. He was suddenly once again with Jeremy everywhere.
And now he was no longer either silent or humble. Words poured from his mouth, words inevitably, unavoidably connected with himself and his doings, his fine brave doings—how he was this at home and that at home, how his aunt had thought the one and his mother the other, how his father had given him a pony and his cousin a dog. . . .