This was such a silly idea, that Pollio shook his head impatiently.
“He don’t hear one word we say,” remarked Posy to Hop-clover, after they had asked him half a dozen questions, and received no answer. “He has felt real bad ever since he laughed in meeting. I ’spect he’s afraid Teddy will hear of it; but I sha’n’t tell.—Look up here, Pollio: don’t you be afraid. I sha’n’t tell Teddy.”
Pollio made no reply even to this. The two little girls gave him up then, and went to keeping house very cosily in the wheelbarrow.
“Well, I don’t know what Mr. Littlefield will think,” pursued the unhappy boy. “But he won’t think ’twas me; for nobody saw me but the girls, and they didn’t hear it crack. I’m so glad they didn’t hear it crack!”
By this time it seemed as if he could not possibly stay in the barn another minute. The more he thought about the carriage, the worse he felt.
“Come, girls, let’s go somewhere else,” said he, rushing out with a sort of war-whoop.
The girls were having a very interesting time, nursing some ears of corn through the “yellow-fever;” but at Pollio’s call they deserted their poor sick children, and followed him. He led them a very roundabout chase, never stopping long enough to look at any thing, or to let them have any sort of a good time.
He was trying to run away from something. What was it?
From himself.