then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not
know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind
him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and
realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don't care. I
will have it if I want to. You're _not_ to, Roger," and of Timothy, his
baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously,
persistently, hopelessly.

"Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!" said the nurse, raising her eye for a
moment from her book. "Why can't you be quiet?"

Outside the world was beginning to shine and glitter, inside it was all
horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way
his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside
her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from
Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother's room downstairs
and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued
possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown
figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.

"Lucy," he said. "Do you s'pose if you was going to jump all the way
down to the street and wasn't afraid that p'r'aps your legs wouldn't get
broken?"

He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his
question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain
her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved
her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain
rebuff--he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.