“Now, ma handsome,” said Mammy (she must have forgotten about the trousers), “skip back to bed like a fly in a jaboon.”
So Tommy skipped. Daddy blew out the candle, and soon their regular breathing testified that all three slept.
CHAPTER II
AFTER all Tommy Tregennis had breakfast at the proper time the following morning; and although he left home a little earlier than usual it was with no intention of hurrying. Rather did he choose to swagger slowly through the crooked streets, while every now and again he bent ostentatiously to pick up a stone to throw at a sparrow, or a lamp-post, or an old tin in the gutter. It did not matter in the least what he aimed at, sparrow, post or tin, for never by any chance did he hit it; but it mattered greatly that those children who had laughed last night, laughed while he was sobbing in bed, should know that there was no need for him to stand upright unless he cared to do so. Without shame he could now assume any attitude he chose. For Tommy Tregennis wore a new pair of trousers!
Tommy himself had not known of their existence, but weeks before, at night while he slept, Mammy had planned and cut and sewn by the light of the kitchen lamp. With puckered brow, and tightly compressed lips holding two or three pins, she had spread her old green coat carefully on the kitchen table, smoothed out every wrinkle, and upon it placed a piece of newspaper which bore some resemblance to the shape of Tommy’s legs.
The first plan was faulty; the curve of the arm-hole interfered. The newspaper pattern was taken up, Mammy’s mouth held more pins and her frown grew deeper. It was only after much anxious thought that she decided finally that it was possible to cut a strip from a sleeve of the coat and join it to the top of the trousers in such a way that when Tommy’s jersey was well pulled down the seam would not show. So the pattern was pinned on more firmly, the first cut was made half-an-inch from the edge of the paper, and after that there was no drawing back.
As Mammy planned and pinned and cut and sewed in the yellow light of the lamp the silence of the little kitchen was only broken by the fall of a cinder now and again, and by the steady ticking of the clocks.