ill break," said Maggie,
shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom's arm, and laying her wet cheek
on his shoulder.

Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone:
"Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren't I a good brother to you?"

"Ye-ye-es," sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling
convulsively.

"Didn't I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to
buy it, and saved my money o' purpose, and wouldn't go halves in
the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn't?"

"Ye-ye-es ... and I ... lo-lo-love you so, Tom."

"But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off
my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag
my fish-line down when I set you to watch it, and you pushed your
head through my kite, all for nothing."

"But I didn't mean," said Maggie; "I couldn't help it."

"Yes, you could," said Tom, "if you'd minded what you were doing.
And you're a naughty girl, and you sha'n't go fishing with me
to-morrow."

With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie toward the
mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain to him of Harry.

Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two;
then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic,
where she sat on the floor, and laid her head against the
worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come
home, and she had thought how happy she should be--and now he was
cruel to her. What use was anything, if Tom didn't love her? Oh, he
was very cruel! Hadn't she wanted to give him the money, and said
how very sorry she was? She knew she was naughty to her mother, but
she had never been naughty to Tom--had never _meant_ to be naughty
to him.

"Oh, he is cruel!" Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure
in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of
the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she
was too miserable to be angry.

These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and
strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and
weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.

This text furnishes an easier exercise in interpretation, does it not?
It does not require a great stretch of ima