Nascent Drama

[The Dork Lord]

The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, and talked little; but they sighed often.

 

[The Dork Lord]

The Saturday holiday seemed a burden to the children.

 

[The Dork Lord]

They had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them up.

 

[The Dork Lord]

In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the deserted schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy.

 

[The Dork Lord]

But she found nothing there to comfort her.

 

[The Dork Lord]

She soliloquized:

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again!

 

[The Dork Lord]

But I haven't got anything now to remember him by."

 

[The Dork Lord]

And she choked back a little sob.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Presently she stopped, and said to herself:

 

[The Dork Lord]

"It was right here.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say that --

 

[The Dork Lord]

I wouldn't say it for the whole world.

 

[The Dork Lord]

But he's gone now; I'll never, never, never see him any more."

 

[The Dork Lord]

This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Then quite a group of boys and girls --

 

[The Dork Lord]

playmates of Tom's and Joe's --

 

[The Dork Lord]

came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and talking in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they saw him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with awful prophecy, as they could easily see now!) --

 

[The Dork Lord]

and each speaker pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and then added something like "and I was a-standing just so --

 

[The Dork Lord]

just as I am now, and as if you was him --