He did not want to play with those little girls, and yet he was hurt because he had not been asked.
The party had been a most miserable failure, and a year ago it would have been such a success.

He did not know that he was standing now, in the middle of his eighth year, at the parting of the ways; that only yesterday he had been a baby, and that he would never be a baby again.
He did not feel his independence--he felt only inclined to tears and a longing, that he would never, never confess, even to himself, that someone should come and comfort him! Nevertheless, even at this very moment, although he did not know it, he, a free, independent man, was facing the world for the first time on his own legs.

His mother might have realised it had she been there--but she was not.

Mary, however, was there, and in the very middle of her game, searching for him, as she was always doing, she found him desolate under the shadow of the oak.

She slipped away, and, coming up to him with the shyness and fear that she always had when she approached him, because she loved him so much and he could so easily hurt her, said: "Aren't you coming to play, Jeremy ?" "I don't care," he answered gruffly.
"It isn't any fun without you." She paused, and added: "Would you mind if I stayed here too ?" "I'd rather you played," he said; and yet he was comforted by her, determined, as he was, that she should never know it! "I'd rather stay," she said, and then gazed, with that melancholy stare through her large spectacles that always irritated Jeremy, out across the garden.
"I'm all right," he said again; "only my stocking tickles, and I can't get at it--it's the back of my leg.