“Well, take this,” said Davis, falling back a little, “and stand about where you are, and let me have it the best you know how.”
Creepy took the ball and threw it with a trembling hand; it struck the ground some distance from Davis’ feet.
“Ha, ha,” shouted Carter, “how’s that for high?”
“How is that for Humpy?” answered Hal Fenimore, in a rather low tone, but heard well enough for all that.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”
Half a dozen voices in the crowd took up the chorus, and it rang across the playground until Tom looked up at the professor’s window in agony.
Ah, those words! The lame child understood it all now! In one instant the veil his good angel had hung for all those years between his eyes and his deformity was taken away and an evil demon seemed to be chuckling the whole truth in his ear.
He was a cripple, a hunchback, an ugly thing to look upon! He should never be like other people, and other people would never forget that he was unlike them. Wherever he went he was to be marked, ridiculed, and avoided! A prince indeed! Ah, the doctor had been mocking him, mocking him, with all the rest! The lonely life he had thought ended to-day, had in reality only begun, for “what was a fellow like him going to do?” Who wanted a humpback to take a share in their games, much less to be counted among their friends? What was there for him but to shrink away and hide from scornful eyes for ever?