Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/138

The Loom of Destiny out that night, he said he would send for Hal. Good old Hal would come and tell him what to do. Hal knew so well how to do things.

The next morning Tiddlywinks contrived to avoid kissing his mamma. It was a mockery he would go through no longer, for she was wicked and loved the Ogre. By noon he had sent a letter off to Princeton, to Hal. The cook had addressed the envelope for him, and he had sat down and, with great labour and infinite pains, had secretly penned the first letter of his lifetime. It was just five words: "Der Hal come hom quick." Then he sneaked out to the stables and gave it to James to post, along with seven precious pennies as a bribe to silence. All that day Tiddlywinks did not care for even cream-puffs or cheese-cakes, and the cook told Sally the housemaid that she knew Tiddlywinks was getting the measles or scarlatina—she could n't say which—he was so quiet, and worse than that, had calmly declined to scrape out the ice-cream freezer!

When he sat down to dinner that night, 126