"They don't love me. They like me to be away. Nobody loves poor Hoodie. Hoodie can't be good when nobody loves her. It isn't Hoodie's fault."
And through her babyish brain there ran misty, dreamy ideas of something she would do to make "them" all sorry—she would go away somewhere "far, far," and never come back again. But where? This she could not yet settle about, but fortunately for the peace of the rest of the walk her cogitations kept her quiet till they were all at home again.
Martin's threat of speaking to Hoodie's mother was not at once carried out. And Martin herself began to think better of it when at tea-time Hoodie behaved herself quite respectably. The naughty mood had passed again for the time, it seemed.
Sitting round the table in the intervals of bread-and-butter and honey—for it was Sunday evening, "honey evening" the little boys called it—the children chatted together pleasantly. Martin's story had greatly impressed them.
"Weren't you frightened at first when you saw the big, big doggie, Martin?" said Maudie.
"Might have been a woof," remarked Duke, whose ideas had a knack of getting so well lodged in his brain that it was often difficult to get them out again.
"But there are no wolfs. I told you so before," said Maudie.
"No," said Duke, "you toldened Hoodie so. You didn't tolden me."
"Well, dear Duke, what does it matter?" said Magdalen, with a slight touch of impatience in her tone. "You heard me say it, and you do go on and on so about a thing."
Hoodie looked up with a twinkle in her eyes.