Mere vulgar stealing, she says."
"Why, Harry Pemberton, how dare you say _stealing_ to me?" And Frank's
red hair stood up like a fiery flame.
"I'm only quoting mother. Don't get mad, Frank."
"Does your mother know it's to decorate the soldiers' graves that we
want the flowers, and that Squire Eliot won't be home till next year,
and there are hundreds 'n hundreds of flowers fading and wasting and
dying on his lawn and garden, and furthermore that he'd _like_ the
fellows to decorate the cemetery with his flowers? Does she know that, I
say?" and the blue-eyed lad gesticulated fiercely.
"All is," replied Harry, firmly, "that you boys can go ahead if you
like, but mother won't let me, and you must count me out."
"All is," said Frank, mimicking Harry's tone, "you're a mother-boy, and
we fellows won't have anything more to do with you." So they sent him to
Coventry, which means that they let him alone severely. They had begun
to do it already, which was why he whistled so merrily to show he did
not mind.
I never for my part could see that there was any disgrace in being a
mother-boy. But I suppose a boy thinks he is called babyish, if the name
is fastened on him. As Harry went on his errand, he no longer whistled,
at least he didn't whistle much. And as he went to school next day, and
next day, and next day, and found himself left out in the cold, he would
have been more than the usual twelve-year-old laddie if he had not felt
his courage fail.
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