“Several years before. Of course, my dear, you had done something to Jimmy?”
“No, mamma. You see, I tried to; but I couldn’t!”
“Tried to! What made you try, my son?”
“Why, you s’pose I’m going to let him ’buse my little sister,—nipping up her hands like a pair o’ tongs with a pair o’ clams?”
“Oh! was that it?”
Mrs. Pitcher couldn’t help hugging Pollio; for he didn’t seem to mind his own sufferings when he thought of his precious Posy.
“Well, my son, if Jimmy pinched her, that was wrong. I like to see you so ready to protect your sister; but you needn’t fly at anybody like a little savage. I can’t have my darling boy fight!”
Pollio buried his aching nose in his mother’s bosom. He didn’t want to fight again that day, you may be sure.
It was a whole week before he could go to school again; for his nose was hideous. It was red, blue, green, and yellow; and Nunky said nobody could get an education who looked like that.
Posy would not go without her brother, and mourned very much because people laughed at him.