“’N will she play with me, Mammy?”
“If you’m a brave good boy, she will. But no sliding down Skiddery Rock, mind.”
“’N shall I show her the Smuggler’s Cave, ’n let her ride on Dobbin? Oh, Mammy, I wish as Annabel would come. You’ll bring her straight in to see me, Mammy, won’t you, before her goes to bed?”
Mrs. Tregennis promised. “But you’ll have to be very good, ma handsome,” she warned him, “or your Mammy’ll be properly ashamed of ee ’longside Annabel.”
For the first time Tommy felt the improvement of his moral character to be a real need.
Mrs. Tregennis went downstairs to make final preparation for supper, while Tommy left to himself passed into the realms of play-acting. The dramatis personæ were Tommy Tregennis, enacted by himself, and blue-eyed, curly-haired Annabel, represented for the moment by the pillow. There were others, too, scattered dimly in the shadows of the room.
In the first act Tommy sat up in bed, clutched the pillow tightly, and “I love you,” he said.
Then, in reply to an interruption from the shadows: “No, her don’t love ee, Jimmy Prynne!”
The setting of the second act was slightly different, as, by this time, the sheets and blankets were lying in a disorderly heap upon the floor. Tommy was kneeling in the middle of the cot digging a wonderful castle in the sand, while the pillow (that is, Annabel), looked on with admiring wonder. Those others, in the shadows, tried hard to make fine castles too, but Annabel gave them never a look.
Before the curtain rose on the third act the real Annabel, accompanied by her mother, entered the house. Ungraciously Tommy thumped the pillow and flung it aside.