"I'll tell you if you'll let me come in."
"Well, come then," Beth answered impatiently, and led the way up over the roof to the acting-room. "What is it?" she again demanded, when she had lighted a scrap of candle and seated herself on the steps. "I don't believe it's anything."
"Yes, it is, so there!" said Sammy triumphantly. "But I'll lay you won't guess what it is. Mrs. Barnes has got a baby."
Mrs. Barnes was the wife of the head-master of the Mansion-House School, and all the little boys, feeling that there was more in the event than had been explained to them, were vaguely disgusted.
"I don't call that anything," Beth answered contemptuously. "Lots of people have babies."
"Well," said Sammy, "I wouldn't have thought it of him."
"Thought what of whom?" Beth snapped in a tone which silenced Sammy. He ventured to laugh, however.
"Don't laugh in that gigantic way, Sammy," she exclaimed, still more irritated. "When you throw back your head and open your mouth so wide, I can see you have no wisdom-teeth."
"You're always nasty now, Beth," Sammy complained.
Which was true. Love waning becomes critical. Beth's own feeling for Sammy had been a strong mental stimulant at first, and, in her enjoyment of it, she had overlooked all his shortcomings. There was nothing in him, however, to keep that feeling alive, and it had gradually died of inanition. His slowness and want of imagination first puzzled and then provoked her; and, little-boy-like, he had not even been able to respond to such tenderness as she showed him—not that she had ever showed him much tenderness, for they were just like boys together. She had kissed him, however, once or twice, after a quarrel, to make it up; but she did not like kissing him: little boys are rank. His pretty colouring was all that he had had to attract her, and that, alas! had lost its charm by this time. For a little longer she looked out for him and troubled about him, then let him go gradually—so gradually, that she never knew when exactly he lapsed from her life altogether.