"How did you get your lip hurt so? Did you fall down?"
Again he shook his head. He didn't know just how to tell her. It wasn't fighting. At least, he didn't fight; it had been that other boy. But, somehow, he did not want to say that; he did not want to tell; he wanted something, but he did not know just what it was. He found himself forgetting how he had felt a moment before, and then he discovered that he was not thinking about what he wanted at all. He was thinking what a very blue blue his mother's eyes were when she looked at him so, and, all at once, he felt more sorry for her than for himself, because she looked so troubled; and he kissed her quickly, and hurt his lip.
Mrs. McAllister led him into the house. "Won't you tell mother, Bob?" she asked.
But he couldn't. He was feeling better—much better—but he couldn't tell. There was another reason now, that he hadn't thought of before: it would make her feel more sorry. And
after all, it didn't matter so much; that is, it didn't if— He looked up at her with a new thought.
"But, Bob, you must tell mother all about it," she was saying, as she carefully bathed his chin and lip, and so he had to shake his head again.
"Then you must tell papa this noon, Bob."
Bob considered. No, he couldn't tell Papa Jack, either. He felt pretty sure father himself wouldn't tell about such a thing if he were a boy. He was silent.
Mrs. McAllister began to move about her work, though she still looked at him frequently and anxiously. Bob went away to the window, and stood looking out. He remembered how he had started out that morning, with school-bag and lunch; he remembered how he had approached the school-grounds, and how big and strange and attractive a place it had seemed to him at first, and what a good time all those boys had been having; and then he remembered how, suddenly, he had found them all around him, summoned by the call of that boy with the hateful grin, and how Curly Davis had sneered and spat and struck. Suddenly he found himself tingling all over, and pressing a burning forehead against the cool glass, and digging his knuckles into the corner of the sash till they ached. Then he went into the library, and lay down on father's big leather couch, and thought and thought.
Papa Jack came home for lunch at noon, and mother told him. Bob heard them in the hall.