“Perhaps Tant Sannie will send him away,” said the boy, in his mumbling way, trying to comfort her.
“No,” said Em, shaking her head; “no. Last night when the little Hottentot maid was washing her feet, he told her he liked such feet, and that fat women were so nice to him; and she said I must always put pure cream in his coffee now. No; he’ll never go away,” said Em dolorously.
The boy put down his skins and fumbled in his pocket, and produced a small piece of paper containing something. He stuck it out toward her.
“There, take it for you,” he said. This was by way of comfort.
Em opened it and found a small bit of gum, a commodity prized by the children; but the great tears dropped down slowly on to it.
Waldo was distressed. He had cried so much in his morsel of life that tears in another seemed to burn him.
“If,” he said, stepping in awkwardly and standing by the table, “if you will not cry I will tell you something—a secret.”
“What is that?” asked Em, instantly becoming decidedly better.
“You will tell it to no human being?”
“No.”