"It was only a silly old dream.

He wasn't real a bit.

I'm not a rotten kid now that thinks fairies and all that true." He was bothered, too, by the affectionate sentiment (still disguised, but ever, as the days proceeded, more thinly) of his mother and sisters.
The girls, May and Clare, adored young John.

His elder brother was away with a school friend.

John, therefore, was left to feminine attention, and very tiresome he found it.