u want to see your mother for now, Jeremy? You always see her
at twelve o'clock." Miss Jones pushed her spectacles lower upon her nose
and continued her reading.

"I want to."

"Well, you can't now."

"Why not?"

"Because I say not--that's enough."

But Jeremy was gentle to-day. He got off his chair, went round to Miss
Jones's chair, and, looking up at her out of his bruised eye, said in
the most touching voice:

"But, please, Miss Jones, I want to. I really do."

Then she said what he had known all the time was coming:

"I'm afraid you won't see your mother to-day, dear. She's not well.
She's in bed."

"Why? Is she ill?"

"She's tired after her journey yesterday, I expect."

He said no more.

He tried during the whole of that day not to think of his mother, and he
found that, for the first time in his life, he could do nothing else but
think of her. During the morning he sat very silently over his lessons,
did all that he was told, did not once kick Mary under the table, nor
ask Miss Jones to sharpen his pencil, nor make faces at Hamlet. Once or
twice, in a way that he had, he leaned his head on his hand as though
he were an ancient professor with a whole library of great works behind
him, and when Miss Jones asked him whether he had a headache he said:
"No, thank you," instead of seizing on the wonderful opportunity of
release that such a question offered him. When they all went for a walk
in the afternoon, he sprang for a moment into something of his natural
vivacity. They came upon a thin, ill-shaven tramp dressed as a sailor,
with a patch over one eye, producing terrible discordance from a fiddle.
This individual held in one hand a black tin cup, and at his side
crouched a mongrel terrier, whose beaten and dishevelled appearance
created at once hopes in the breast of the flamboyant Hamlet. This
couple were posted just outside Mr. Poole's second-hand bookshop, close
to the "2d." box, and for a moment Jeremy was enthralled. He wanted to
give the hero his week's penny, and upon finding that his week's
penny was not, owing to sweet purchases on the previous day, he began
elaborate bargainings with Miss Jones as to the forestalling of future
pennies. Meanwhile, Hamlet leapt, with every sign of joyful expectation,
upon the pauper dog; the blind sailor began to hit wildly about with
his stick, Mr. Poole's "2d." box was upset, and the sailor's black patch
fell off, revealing him as the possessor of two beau