“Dallas,” he said, bluntly, “my grandfather won’t be down till half-past one. He is busy in his study—gets a lot of letters in the morning.”
“Indeed,” replied the boy, with a movement of his head like that of an older person, “I can fancy that he is very much occupied. And then he would hardly get Mr. Folsom’s letter saying I was coming until this morning.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Titus, “he had just got it when you came.”
“Then I would be a kind of surprise to him,” said the boy, pleasantly, and his big blue eyes fixed themselves calmly on Titus’s dark face.
The Sancroft boy was in torture. He felt himself growing crimson. His cheeks would tell the whole story.
They did. The English boy understood. He was not wanted. However, his manner did not change.
He coolly uncrossed his feet, put the left one where the right one had been, so that it would get a little more heat from the fire, and meditatively gazed at the leaping flames.
Titus, with a dull pain at his heart, noted that the boy’s shoes were more than half worn. One of them, indeed, had a hole in it. Why were things so unequal in this world? He never used to notice that there was a difference between other boys and himself. Now he was beginning to see that boys just as deserving as himself and Charlie Brown were shabbily and insufficiently dressed. Why, this boy, for instance, had not enough on to keep him warm. Why was it? Why had he no rich grandfather to clothe him?
“Here is the meat, sir,” said Higby, trotting into the room with a plate in his hand; “minced beef, sir,” and he respectfully put it on the table near the English boy.
A shade passed over the stranger’s face. With all his self-possession he could not help showing that he was disappointed.