Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an
andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:
"Please, Becky, won't you take it?"
She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over
the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently
Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she
flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:
"Tom! Come back, Tom!"
She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions
but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid
herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she
had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross
of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers
about her to exchange sorrows with.
CHAPTER VIII
TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of
the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He
crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing
juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit.
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