“Billy, you mustn’t ’sturb my Pollio,” said little Posy sternly.
“Come here to me, you darling precious Posy!” said Eliza, seizing the pale child in her arms. “Don’t you want some jelly?”
This was Eliza’s idea of “pacifying children.” But Posy was too wretched to care for jelly.
When Pollio had been left alone with his mother for an hour or so, he grew calmer. She bathed his head, but did not talk, except to say in a soothing tone,—
“Poor little Pollio! Mamma’s little Pollio!”
“O mamma!” said he, speaking for the first time, “I don’t feel as well as I used to.”
“No, dear, we all know it.”
“The wolf stepped on me,—with a cap on.”
“The wolf was only Billy Barstow, dear.”