“Oh, Father, mayn't he come to-night?” said Mary.
“No, Mary, I'm afraid not.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “It won't be any fun without Jeremy,” she said. She wished to make the further sacrifice of saying that she would not go unless Jeremy did, but some natural caution restrained her.
Mr. Cole, his face heavy with sorrow, departed. At the dumb misery of Jeremy's face the Jampot's hear—in reality a kind and even sentimental heart—repented her.
“There, Master Jeremy, you be a good boy all day, and I dare say your father will take you, after all; and we won't think no more about what you said to me in the 'eat of the moment.”
But Jeremy answered nothing; nor did he respond to the smell of bacon, nor the advances of Hamlet, nor the flood of sunlight that poured into the room from the frosty world outside.
A complete catastrophe. They none of them had wanted to see this thing with the urgent excitement that he had felt. They had not dreamt of it for days and nights and nights and days, as he had done. Their whole future existence did not depend upon their witnessing this, as did his.
During that morning he was a desperate creature, like something caged and tortured. Do happy middle-aged philosophers assure us that children are light-hearted and unfeeling animals? Let them realise something of the agony which Jeremy suffered that day. His whole world had gone.
He was wicked, an outcast; his word could never be trusted again; he would be pointed at, as the boy who had told a lie... And he would not meet Dick Whittington.
The eternity of his punishment hung around his neck like an iron chain. Childhood's tragedies are terrible tragedies, because a child has no sense of time; a moment's dismay is eternal; a careless word from an elder is a lasting judgment; an instant's folly is a lifetime's mistake.