"Do come, Dulcie; don't be cross!"
"Go away, you rude boy," replied Dulcie.
Harold tried coaxing for a little while longer, and then he went away and left his sister alone in the school-room. It was very lonely there, and before five minutes had passed Dulcie heartily regretted that she had refused Harold's offer.
"But he was horrid," she said, "and anyway he is miserable too; he can't bear playing alone."
Harold, however, was anything but miserable, for, on peeping out of the window, Dulcie saw him in the next-door garden helping the children there to make a big snow-man. He was laughing and shouting, and had evidently forgotten all about her.
A lump seemed to have suddenly risen in her throat, and as she crept back to the table two big tears fell splashing down upon the poem she had been trying to write and blotted out some of the words; then down went her head upon the paper, and in another moment she was sobbing pitifully.
It was almost dark when Harold came running up to the school-room, and, bursting open the door, cried cheerily: "Such a lark, Dulcie; just listen. Hullo," he added, "what's the matter?"
In another moment his arm was round his sister's neck and she was rubbing her tear-stained cheek against his cold rosy one.
