"What's the matter, dear?" said auntie, who was sitting next him, "is your tea too hot? Has it scalded your poor little mouth?"
She said it in a low voice. She was so kind and "understanding," she knew Carrots would not have liked everybody round the table to begin noticing him, and as she looked at him more closely, she saw that the tears in his eyes were those of distress, not of "scalding."
"No, thank you," said Carrots, looking up in auntie's face in his perplexity; "it isn't that. My tea is werry good, but it's got sugar in."
"And you don't like sugar? Poor old man! Never mind, Cecil will give you another cup. You're not like Sybil in your tastes," said auntie, kindly, and she turned to ask Cecil for some sugarless tea for her little brother.
"No, no, auntie. Oh, please don't," whispered Carrots, his trouble increasing, and pulling hard at his aunt's sleeve as he spoke, "I do like sugar werry much—it isn't that. But mamma said I was never, never to take nucken that wasn't mine, and sugar won't be mine for two weeks more, nurse says."
Auntie stared at her little nephew in blank bewilderment. What did he mean? Even her quick wits were quite at fault.
"What do you mean, my dear little boy?" she said.
Suddenly a new complication struck poor Carrots.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "it's a secret, it's a secret, and I'm telling it," and he burst into tears.
It was impossible now to hide his trouble. Everybody began to cross-question him.