"I've just heard about your father being where he is. It's beastly rough
luck. I hope you don't mind my saying I'm jolly sorry for you."
The boy had a pale face and watery blue eyes. When Oswald said this his
eyes got waterier than ever, and he climbed down to the ground before he
said--
"I don't care so much, but it do upset mother something crool."
It is awfully difficult to console those in affliction. Oswald thought
this, then he said--
"I say; never mind if those beastly kids won't play with you. It isn't
your fault, you know."
"Nor it ain't father's neither," the boy said; "he broke his arm
a-falling off of a rick, and he hadn't paid up his club money along of
mother's new baby costing what it did when it come, so there warn't
nothing--and what's a hare or two, or a partridge? It ain't as if it was
pheasants as is as dear to rear as chicks."
Oswald did not know what to say, so he got out his new
pen-and-pencil-combined and said--
"Look here! You can have this to keep if you like."