"Nobody wants me! Nobody wants me!" he sighed, as he lay down under the
trees. "Nobody ever did want me,--I wonder why! And everybody loves my
darling Gay and wants to keep her, and I don't wonder about that. But,
oh, if I only belonged to somebody! (Cuddle up close, little Ragsy;
we've got nobody but just each other, and you can put your head into the
other pocket that hasn't got the gingerbread in it, if you please!) If
I only was like that little butcher's boy that he lets ride on the seat
with him, and hold the reins when he takes meat into the houses,--or if
I only was that freckled-face boy with the straw hat that lives on the
way to the store! His mother keeps coming out to the gate on purpose to
kiss him. Or if I was even Billy Pennell! He's had three mothers and two
fathers in three years, Jabe says. Jabe likes me, I think, but he can't
have me live at his house, because his mother is the kind that needs
plenty of room, he says,--and Samanthy has no house. But I did what I
tried to do. I got away from Minerva Court and found a lovely place for
Gay to live, with two mothers instead of one; and maybe they'll tell her
about me when she grows bigger, and then she'll know I didn't want to
run away from her, but whether they tell her or not, she's only a little
baby, and boys must always take care of girls; that's what my
dream-mother whispers to me in the night,--and that's ... what ... I'm
always ..."
Come! gentle sleep, and take this friendless little knight-errant in thy
kind arms! Bear him across the rainbow bridge, and lull him to rest
with the soft plash of waves and sighing of branches! Cover him with thy
mantle of dreams, sweet goddess, and give him in sleep what he hath
never had in waking!
Meanwhile, a more dramatic scene was being enacted at the White Farm.
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