Mr. Cole, his face heavy with sorrow, departed. At the dumb misery
of Jeremy's face the Jampot's hear--in reality a kind and even
sentimental heart--repented her.

"There, Master Jeremy, you be a good boy all day, and I dare say
your father will take you, after all; and we won't think no more
about what you said to me in the 'eat of the moment."

But Jeremy answered nothing; nor did he respond to the smell of
bacon, nor the advances of Hamlet, nor the flood of sunlight that
poured into the room from the frosty world outside.

A complete catastrophe. They none of them had wanted to see this
thing with the urgent excitement that he had felt. They had not
dreamt of it for days and nights and nights and days, as he had
done. Their whole future existence did not depend upon their
witnessing this, as did his.

During that morning he was a desperate creature, like something
caged and tortured. Do happy middle-aged philosophers assure us that
children are light-hearted and unfeeling animals? Let them realise
something of the agony which Jeremy suffered that day. His whole
world had gone.

He was wicked, an outcast; his word could never be trusted again; he
would be pointed at, as the boy who had told a lie . . . And he
would not meet Dick Whittington.

The eternity of his punishment hung around his neck like an iron