“Well, please do me the favour never to DARE to touch my things again,” he said as he gathered up the broken fragments and looked at them vexedly.

“And will YOU please do me the favour never to ORDER me to do anything whatever,” I retorted. “When a thing’s broken, it’s broken, and there is no more to be said.” Then I smiled, though I hardly felt like smiling.

“Oh, it may mean nothing to you, but to me it means a good deal,” said Woloda, shrugging his shoulders (a habit he had caught from Papa). “First of all you go and break my things, and then you laugh.

What a nuisance a little boy can be!”

“LITTLE boy, indeed? Then YOU, I suppose, are a man, and ever so wise?”