"You ain't foolin' me?"
And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt most awfully rum and uncomfy,
and though he wanted most frightfully to do something for the boy he
felt as if he wanted to get away more than anything else, and he never
was gladder in his life than when he saw Dora coming along, and she
said--
"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired and I'd like to sit down a
bit."
She got the boy to sit down beside her, and Oswald went back to the
others.
Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the
games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away,
and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing
but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been
crying.
It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good,
but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior
thoughts.
And the next day she was but little better.
We were all paddling on the sands, but Dora would not. And presently
Alice left us and went back to Dora, and we all saw across the sandy
waste that something was up.