Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/257

Rh Fred, at ease once more now that his dreaded neighbor had departed.

“I wish people wouldn’t say such things,” he told Bess. “Once in a while I forget, but somebody always reminds me again, and it just  makes me feel as if everybody was watching  me.”

“It was a cruel question, cruelly asked,” said Bess with some energy, as she pulled off her  gloves and took off her hat, preparatory to a  comfortable evening. “If people only knew how such remarks hurt! I wish I could save you from them, laddie.”

At this moment, Rob came back to his seat, and remarked with conscious, but impenitent  pride,—

“Didn’t I just pay up that old woman? Mean old thing!”

Then he devoted his attention to the porter, as he converted the seats into diminutive bedrooms, partitioned and curtained off and  sumptuously furnished with a mirror and a wall  pocket.

Long after the boys were stowed away for the night, Bess could hear them whisper and giggle