Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He had possessed himself of some of Dorothy's dolls' tea things, he had begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time to time into such sentences as, "Do have a little more tweacle pudding, Mrs. Smith. It's the best tweacle," and, "It's a nice day, isn't it!" but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of "Oh! Roger, you're pulling my hair," or "I won't play if you don't look out!"
It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim's festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window panes diverted his attention. Once he broke into a chuckle. "Isn't they banging on the window, Lucy?" he said, but she was, it appeared, too deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction, he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that the party was over. "Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. —— I think the wain almost isn't coming now."
He said farewell to them all and climbed upon the window seat. Here, gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more slowly; at first, "spatter-spatter-spatter," then, "spatter—spatter." Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don't care. I will have it if I want to. You're not to, Roger," and of Timothy, his baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously, persistently, hopelessly.
"Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!" said the nurse, raising her eye for a moment from her book. "Why can't you be quiet?"
Outside the world was beginning to shine and glitter, inside it was all horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother's room downstairs and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.
"Lucy," he said. "Do you s'pose if you was going to jump all the way down to the street and wasn't afraid that p'r'aps your legs wouldn't get broken?"
He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain rebuff—he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.
"What do you think, Lucy?"
"Oh, I don't know. How can I tell? Don't bother."
It was then that Bim felt what was, for him, a very rare sensation. He was irritated.