“If you wanted to go, Tom, I’d stay,” he said.
“Naw-w,” said Tom, with the contempt of one who has not been invited.
“Or if you thought they’d let me belong to the Company, I’d rather stay home and belong than to go to Aunt Kate’s,” added Sonny Boy.
Tom was one of the boys who were getting up a company of soldiers, but Sonny Boy had never dared to say before that he wanted to join it.
Tom laughed aloud. “A great soldier you’d make, Sonny Boy! The fellows wouldn’t want you to belong,” he said.
Tom didn’t mean to be unkind, but he thought that when a boy was rather bow-legged and never had got out of the small school, he ought to know that he wasn’t cut out for a soldier.
“It’s well enough for him to go and visit his Aunt Kate,” thought Tom.
“‘AUNT KATE WANTS SONNY BOY,’ SHE SAID.”