“My!” gasped Tommy.
“Well!” said Auntie Jessie, and walked on.
Tommy felt dreadful. “Now I shall get it somethin’ awful,” he muttered. “Now I shall just be ’bout half killed.” Then, holding the saucer well in front of him, he ran quickly home.
“Mammy,” he explained, somewhat breathlessly, “I didn’t know as I was a goin’ to do it. ’Twent in quite of itself, it did. They be all a-comin’ to tell ee, Mammy, but don’t ee hit I for I’ve telled ee of it first. I didn’t know as I was a-goin’ to do it, but there ’twas, an’ Auntie Jessie she saw an’ ’ll tell ee, but ’twent in of itself, it did, sure as sure it did, Mammy.”
“What be all this about, Tommy Tregennis?” Mammy inquired. “Try to talk a bit of sense, do ee now.” And then she heard the story of Tommy’s lapse from decency.
Like Auntie Jessie, Mammy merely said, “Well!”
“I’ve never done no such thing afore, Mammy,” argued Tommy, “’an’ I’ve seen other boys an’ girls a-puttin’ their fingers in pennorths of jam one, two, three an’ four times.”
“Oh, they children!” replied Mammy, and Tommy knew that somehow his line of defence was weak.
“Mammy,” he said, very pleadingly, “Mammy, it did just slippen in, it did,” and he held the guilty finger up in front of him and looked at it sadly as he slowly shook his head.