I had less confidence, but he was the mysterious man whom
you ran for in the dead of night (you flung sand at his window to
waken him, and if it was only toothache he extracted the tooth
through the open window, but when it was something sterner he was
with you in the dark square at once, like a man who slept in his
topcoat), so I did as he bade me, and not only did she laugh then
but again when I put the laugh down, so that though it was really
one laugh with a tear in the middle I counted it as two.
It was doubtless that same sister who told me not to sulk when my
mother lay thinking of him, but to try instead to get her to talk
about him. I did not see how this could make her the merry mother
she used to be, but I was told that if I could not do it nobody
could, and this made me eager to begin. At first, they say, I was
often jealous, stopping her fond memories with the cry, 'Do you
mind nothing about me?' but that did not last; its place was taken
by an intense desire (again, I think, my sister must have breathed
it into life) to become so like him that even my mother should not
see the difference, and many and artful were the questions I put to
that end. Then I practised in secret, but after a whole week had
passed I was still rather like myself. He had such a cheery way of
whistling, she had told me, it had always brightened her at her
work to hear him whistling, and when he whistled he stood with his
legs apart, and his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers.
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