He came towards Mamma and Victor across the fallen leaves, taking off his hat, in which he had stuck flowers in the Tyrolean fashion, which he much admired. The seven little boys stopped throwing horse chestnuts at each other in order to have a good look at the new pupil.
“Here is Victor,” said Mamma, looking as if she were going to cry. “He is going to try to be good and study very hard, Mr. Page.”
“So you’re going to try hard, are you?” asked Mr. Page, looking through him mildly and vaguely.
Victor’s hand tightened on Mamma’s, and he looked up for directions.
“Yes, Mr. Page,” she prompted.
“Yes, Mr. Page.”
“Well spoken, Young Meritorious,” said Mr. Page, patting his head. “Come and see my tea-roses, ma’am—they’ve never been more beautiful:
“ ‘And thou, most lovely Rose,
Of tint most delicate,
Fair consort of the morn;
Delighted to imbibe
The genial dew of heaven,
Rich vegetation’s vermeil-tinctured gem—’ ”
And his hand beat time gently on the little boy’s silky head.
But if Mr. Page didn’t know it was time she went and school began, Mamma did. She turned to say goodbye to Victor.
What had happened to him? What had he done to make himself look so tiny? She felt as if she were looking at him through the wrong end of her opera-glasses. How could she leave him alone, so little and young? She bent to kiss him, and drove away weeping.
The other little boys were scandalized. To be sure, their mothers had brought them to school once, long ago, but that was when they were young, last year. Behind their geographies they made loud smacking noises and whispered to each other, “Goodbye, Mamma’s darling, sweet little baby girl!” Victor pretended not to notice them, but the ears that Cousin Lizzie Blow complained of, turned scarlet, and presently one tear trickled down his cheek. But he whisked it off with a finger when no one was looking, and a tortoiseshell butterfly floating in at the window cheered him up a little.
When recess came, he followed the other boys out onto the lawn. He felt too shy to take the pear and the molasses cookies out of his satchel. He didn’t quite know what to do. Mamma, or Maggie, or May, or Lily, had always been there to tell him before.
The little boys became terribly busy. They tore out of the open window shouting, “Not it! Not it!” at the top of their lungs. They began a clamorous and confusing game. Victor stood and watched them, his blue eyes wide, his face solemn and excited. Presently he gave a little prancing jump. He was like a lid that lifts on a boiling pot.
“Can you catch?” one boy shouted at him.
“Yes,” said Victor, used to Lily’s mildly tossed beanbags.
The boy threw the ball, which bounced off from Victor’s middle and rolled into a mint bed.
The little boys laughed and laughed. They went on laughing long after they were comfortably through, leaning over and letting their arms hang limp, reeling in circles. They shouted to each other, “Can you catch?” and replied, “Oh, yes, perfectly wonderfully grandly!” and flung the ball and did catch it, generally. They didn’t throw it again to Victor. He might as well have been a boy made of air, dressed in an air shirt and air pantaloons, for all that they seemed to see him. But they had never shouted so loudly, thrown their ball so nonchalantly, fallen down so often, or panted so hard. They were putting him through childhood’s cruel initiation; but also they were showing off to him for all they were worth.
He had never played with children before, except with his worshipping sisters and the colored children he could order about. He felt something heavy swelling in his breast, and his eyes and nose began to prickle.
He thought of home, and the thought was too much for him. He was like the small seaweed-colored fish that will swim back desperately to their seaweed, no matter how often they are taken away from it. There only they are safe. There the seaweed, and the crabs, and the mollusks, and themselves, are all alike, mottled and streaked with the same olives and pale ambers. The clear water is a place of terror, of swooping seagulls and hungry bigger fish—but, oh, the peace, the safety of the seaweed!
The bell rang, and, as the boys crowded back through the window, Victor slipped under the hedge like a raindrop soaking into the earth, and began to run towards home.
He ran faster than ever before in his life. His heart pounded, his breath came sobbingly, his fair hair stuck on his forehead in dark wet points, and water ran down his face. One stocking kept coming down, and he clutched at it as he ran, and pulled it up. Then in a minute down it would slip, and he would clutch and pull, and down it would slip—
He heard a pounding—thud, thud, thud! He knew it was Mr. Page running after him—Mr. Page grown gigantic, Mr. Page with his black hat as high as a mountain above the floating white clouds of his hair, and the flowers stuck in his hat as tall as mountain pine trees—
But, when at last he couldn’t run another step, there was no one there. The road was empty; the fields of grass and wildflowers were still except for the song of the grasshoppers; the river flowed blue and peaceful in the sunshine.
He didn’t dare stop very long. He began to run again, clutching at his stocking, kicking up the dust with his nice new shoes.
Martha was churning in the kitchen shed. Slap, slap! The butter was coming beautifully, in
