Granny and Tommy felt equally guilty. Granny, as the elder, felt called upon to explain. “Tommy’s gotten his feet wet, Ellen. Don’t be hard on ’e.”
“So, my son, you’m a naughty boy, be you, and goes to hide behind your Granny’s skirts? Bringin’ your Granny out like this, Tommy Tregennis, because you’m afraid to come home alone. I’d take shame, an’ I was you.”
While Granny Tregennis sorrowfully retraced her steps Tommy accompanied his mother with sinking heart.
Tregennis was sitting by the kitchen fire. “I’ve gotten my feet wet, Daddy,” volunteered Tommy.
“That you have!” he replied, looking down at the tell-tale boots.
“Take ’em off quickly,” ordered Mammy, but Tommy was unequal to the task of grappling with the wet, knotted laces.
“Take ’em off quickly!” he in his turn urged his Daddy, who felt like a conspirator as Tommy confidingly raised first one foot, then the other, that the offending boots might be unlaced and removed.
“Now my stockin’s, Daddy,” he pleaded in a whisper; but here Mrs. Tregennis interposed.
“You’m not goin’ to have clean stockin’s on late Saturday afternoon, Tommy, so now you know,” she asserted decidedly, as she came forward with a sturdy pair of strap shoes, and lifting Tommy to a chair proceeded to put them on over the wet stockings.
