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.