"Let me take the poor child, Sarah," Patty began.
"After I have talked with him, Patty," said Mrs. Ladue patiently. Nobody should know how she dreaded this talk. "Come, Charlie."
She made Charlie mount the stairs ahead of her and she succeeded in steering him into her room. He washed his face with furious haste.
"Charlie, dear boy," she said at last, "I was watching you for a long time this afternoon. You know that I can see very well what goes on in the lot from this window."
He was wiping his face and he exposed his eyes for a moment, gazing at his mother over the edge of the towel. They were handsome eyes and they were filled now with a calculating thoughtfulness, which his mother noted. It did not make her feel any easier.
Charlie considered it worth risking. "Then you saw," he said, still with that petulant note in his voice, "how the boys picked on me. Why, they—"
"I saw, Charlie," Mrs. Ladue interrupted, smiling wearily, "not how the boys picked on you, but how you bothered them. I thought Ollie was very patient and I didn't blame him a bit."
"But he hurt me," Charlie cried in astonishment. It was the most heinous sin that he knew of. Patty would think so.
"You deserved to be hurt. You are eleven, Charlie, and I'm surprised that you don't see that your actions will leave you without friends, absolutely without friends within a few years. Where should we be now, Charlie," continued Mrs. Ladue gently, "if we had had no friends?"
"Guess Cousin Patty'd be my friend," Charlie grumbled. "Guess she would."