It interested the baron to watch the child, and he looked on smiling as the unhappy little creature inspected everything and everybody curiously, while he himself was universally avoided as a nuisance. Once the baron intercepted one of his curious looks. His black eyes instantly fell, when he saw himself observed, and hid behind lowered lids. The baron was amused. The boy actually began to interest him, and it flashed into his mind that he might be made to serve as the speediest means for bringing him and his mother together. He could overcome his shyness, since it proceeded from nothing but fear. At any rate, it was worth the trial. So when Edgar strolled out of the door to pet, in his child’s need of tenderness, the pinkish nostrils of one of the ’bus horses, the baron followed him.
Edgar was certainly unlucky. The driver chased him away rather roughly. Insulted and bored, he stood about aimlessly again, with a vacant, rather melancholy expression in his eyes. The baron now addressed him.
“Well, young man, how do you like it here?” He attempted a tone of jovial ease.
The child turned fairly purple and looked up in actual alarm, drawing his arms close to his body and twisting and turning in embarrassment. For the first time in his life a stranger was the one to address him and not he the stranger.
“Oh,” he managed to stammer out, choking over the last words, “thank you. I—I like it.”
“You do? I’m surprised,” the baron laughed. “It’s a dull place, especially for a young man like you. What do you do with yourself all day long?”
Edgar was still too confused to give a ready answer. Could it be true that this stranger, this elegant gentleman, was trying to pick up a conversation with him—with him, whom nobody had ever before cared a rap about? It made him both shy and proud. He pulled himself together with difficulty.
“I read, and we do a lot of walking. Sometimes we go out driving, mother and I. I am here to get well. I was sick. I must be out in the sunshine a lot, the doctor said.”
Edgar spoke the last with greater assurance. Children are always proud of their ailments. The danger they are in makes them more important, they know, in the eyes of their elders.
“Yes, the sun is good for you. It will tan your cheeks. But you oughtn’t to be standing round the whole day long. A fellow like you ought to be on the go, running, jumping, playing, full of spirits, and up to mischief, too. It strikes me you are too good. With that big fat book under your arm you look as though you were always poking in the house. By jingo, when I think of the kind of fellow I was at your age, I used to raise the devil, and every evening I came home with torn knickerbockers. Don’t be so good, whatever you are.”