Part 10 (1/2)

”I bought you six,” said Gerald. ”Where are the rest?”

”I lost one,” answered Olly, sullenly. ”It fell down a hole.”

”Then give me the other two.”

Olly obeyed still more reluctantly, fixing great, anxious eyes upon his treasures as he laid them, each one more slowly than the last, in his sister's hand.

”There,” said Gerald. ”Perhaps this will teach you to behave better another time. I shall not buy you any more this summer.” She flung out her hand suddenly, and the five pretty stones fell with a splash far out in the lake and disappeared forever, five little cruel sets of circles instantly beginning to widen and widen over their graves in a perfect mockery of roundness. Olly gave one sharp cry, and then stood stock-still, a bitterly hard look coming over his face; those marbles had been very, very dear to his heart. Halloway put his arm tenderly around the little fellow, and drew him close in a very sympathetic way.

”Olly,” he said, gently, ”you know you deserved some punishment, but now that your sister has punished you, I am sure she will forgive you too, as Miss Delano has done, if you only ask her.”

Olly buried his face in his friend's coat, and burst into a fit of heart-broken tears. ”I don't want her to forgive me,” he sobbed. ”I only want my agates,--my pretty, pretty agates!”

”Surely you will forgive him?” pleaded Halloway, looking up at Gerald over Olly's head, and holding out one of the boy's hands in his own. ”He was really penitent when you came up. Let me ask for him.”

Gerald moved a step away, ignoring the hand. ”Certainly, if you wish it,”

she said, coldly.

Halloway bent and kissed Olly's flushed face. ”Do you hear, my boy? It is all right now, and there is Maggie calling you to swing her. Don't forget you promised to make me a visit at the rectory to-morrow.”

Olly threw his arms around Denham's knees and gave him a convulsive hug.

”I like you though you _are_ a minister,” he said, through his tears. ”I just wish you were my sister!” And then he went slowly off to Maggie, and Denham and Gerald stood silently where he had left them. Gerald was the first to speak.

”You think I am hard on Olly. I see it in your face.”

”I do think,” replied Denham, slowly, with a faint smile curving his well-cut lips, ”that perhaps it might be happier for Olly if you would try to consider him less in the light of a boy, and more as--as only a little animal. You are so tender-hearted and pitiful toward animals.”

Gerald flushed angrily. ”I like plain speaking best. You think I am hard on him. Why don't you say so?”

”I will if you prefer it. I do think so.”

”Thanks. Is there any thing else you would like to say to me in your capacity as clergyman before we join the others?”

”Yes, if I may really venture so far. Your hat is quite crooked.”

Gerald straightened it without a smile. ”Thanks again. Anything else?”

”Absolutely nothing.” He turned to escort her back, but Gerald stood still, frowning out at the lake.

”You don't know Olly,” she said, curtly.

”Maybe not, but I know childish nature pretty well, perhaps because I love it.”

”Ah! I don't love it. It isn't lovable to me. It is all nonsense to call it the age of innocence. It is vice in embryo instead of in full leaf, that is all.”

”But that is an inestimable gain of itself. A little of a bad thing is surely much better than a great deal of it. For my part I confess to a great partiality for children. There is something pathetic to me in the little faults and tempers that irritate us now chiefly because they clash against our own weaknesses, and yet on the right guidance of which lies the whole making or marring of the child's life.”

”Doesn't guidance include punishment?”