“What!” said Mrs. Tregennis, “and let all the neighbours know as Tommy Tregennis isn’t to be trusted to fetch an errand for his Mammy? Never. I’ve got ’eaps an’ ’eaps of work to do, and ’tis very busy I be, but I’ll go for the mint myself.”
Then for the first time Tommy’s glance wavered; he held out his hand. “Give I the money,” he said, “I s’pose I must go this wanst. Give I the money,” and away he ran.
On his return he laid the mint on the kitchen table.
“There,” he said, “but I tell ee I ain’t goin’ to fetch no more errands all day.”
“No?” replied Mammy pleasantly, and hummed a little tune as she stripped off the leaves of the mint before chopping them up for the sauce.
Tommy waited a while. Then, “May I go and play on the beach now, Mammy?” he asked.
“Go just where you like, my son,” was the reply “and I hope you’ll spend a very happy morning wherever you be.”
Tommy left the house with a defiant exterior and a leaden feeling within. At play on the beach he lost his ball, which was a rather specially good one, and found, in exchange, two much smaller ones that would not bounce, and therefore offered little in the way of compensation.
At dinner time Mammy was very cheerful, Daddy was silent and Tommy was sad.
After dinner he ran off hastily lest more errands should be required of him, and, for a time, forgot his sorrows in trying to recover by force his own ball from Jimmy Prynne. Jimmy had found it lying snugly in the hollow of a rock where Tommy now remembered he had hidden it for safety. When he had regained possession he removed from the tail of his Jersey cap the two small balls that had lost their bounce; these he kicked disgustedly in the direction of Jimmy Prynne, and turned contemptuously away.