CHAPTER II
TOMMY MOVES AWAY
“Why, ma, what’s the matter?” cried Tommy, bursting into the house a little later. “What has happened? Was there a fire?”
Well might he ask, for the house, that was usually in such trim order, was now in confusion. The chairs were scattered about, and his mother was up on a step-ladder taking down the pictures from the wall, while out in the kitchen Mrs. Norah Flannigan, the washerwoman, was doing up dishes in pieces of newspaper and putting them in barrels and boxes.
“What’s the matter, ma?” asked Tommy again, pausing in the doorway.
“Nothing, Tommy, dear,” answered his mother. “We are going to move away, that’s all. Get on your old suit, and you can help. Oh, what has happened to your clothes?” she added as she looked more closely at him.
“I slid in the dust, playing ball. But, ma, are we really going to move away? Where? When? I didn’t hear anything about it before. Is this the secret Nellie meant?”
“I guess so, dear. Oh, that’s your best school suit, and now I’ve got to stop and scrub it, and it will never look the same again. Oh, Tommy!”
“I didn’t mean to, ma,” he answered, tossing his books down on a chair and looking for a good safe place in which to stand up the baseball bat. “I just slid. Then I tried to clean the dust off with bunches of grass and my handkerchief. My handkerchief’s real clean,” he went on. “I washed it out in the brook.” And he pulled out a limp and damp rag to show.
“Yes, and then you put it in your pocket all wet; didn’t you, Tommy?”
“I—I guess I did, ma.”