But somehow Pony could not get his voice up out of his throat; he wanted to answer her, but he could not speak. He heard her say, “Go out to the front steps, girls, and see if you can see him,” and then he heard her coming up the stairs; and she came into his room, and when she saw him lying there in bed she said: “Why, I believe in my heart the child’s asleep! Pony! Are you awake?”
Pony made out to say no, and his mother said: “My! what a fright you gave me! Why didn’t you answer me? Are you sick, Pony? Your father said you didn’t seem well at the circus; and you didn’t eat any supper, hardly.”
Pony said he was first-rate, but he spoke very low, and his mother came up and sat down on the side of his bed.
“What is the matter, child?” She bent over and felt his forehead. “No, you haven’t got a bit of fever,” she said, and she kissed him, and began to tumble his short black hair in the way she had, and she got one of his hands between her two, and kept rubbing it. “But you’ve had a long, tiresome day, and that’s why you’ve gone to bed, I suppose. But if you feel the least sick, Pony, I’ll send for the doctor.”
Pony said he was not sick at all; just tired; and that was true; he felt as if he never wanted to get up again.
His mother put her arm under his neck, and pressed her face close down to his, and said very low: “Pony, dear, you don’t feel hard towards your mother for what she did the other night?”
He knew she meant boxing his ears, when he was not to blame, and he said: “Oh no,” and then he threw his arms round her neck and cried; and she told him not to cry, and that she would never do such a thing again; but she was really so frightened she did not know what she was doing.
When he quieted down she said: “Now say your prayers, Pony, ‘Our Father,’” and she said “Our Father” all through with him, and after that, “Now I lay me,” just as when he was a very little fellow. After they had finished she stooped over and kissed him again, and when he turned his face into his pillow she kept smoothing his hair with her hand for about a minute. Then she went away.
Pony could hear them stirring about for a good while down-stairs. His father came in from up-town at last and asked:
“Has Pony come in?” and his mother said: