"I will keep them to myself. Repeating things helps me to remember them, and I would rather forget unkind words if I can."
"Now, if anybody vexes me, I always go straight to mamma, and tell her; or if she is not in, I tell Fred. I believe you were going to say something to me, only you stopped all in a minute. I saw you go quite red, too."
The observant little lady was right. Mark was going to say that he should tell his mother how beautiful everything was at Mr. Mitcheson's, and how different from his own home surroundings. But he felt that silence on this point would be best. Somehow, he shrank from drawing too exact a picture of the cottage at Grimblethorpe.
"Then have you no cousins at all?' persisted Dolly.
"No own cousins or near relatives."
"How horribly poor you must feel! Don't you want any?"
"I should be glad if I had brothers and sisters. There were two baby boys before me, but they died. If I could choose, I would have a brother and a sister."
"It's no good troubling now," said Dolly. "If any were to come, they would be no good for companions, so you would be as well without. Being a boy, you would not want to nurse a baby, like I always do. They are such darlings—at least ours are," claiming proprietary right in the nursery treasures. "Are not your father and mother sorry you have no cousins or anybody?"
"They grieved when the other children died, but I do not think they care about relatives. Father says the fewer people have the better; for if they are richer, they look down on you, and if they are poorer, they always want to borrow money from you."
Mark said this innocently enough, just repeating his father's words. But these made Dolly thoughtful, and she remained silent, puzzling over and trying to understand the difference between this boy's life and parents and her own.