Only an Incident Part 10

"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?"

"Yes, it includes it. But it does not consist of it."

Gerald still stood half turned from him, frowning out over the placid blue water. "Ah," she said, "it chiefly consists of good example and that sort of thing, I suppose."

"I think it consists chiefly of love," said Halloway, simply.

Gerald made no answer at first, then turned and looked at him almost defiantly. Her changeable eyes seemed black as she raised them to his.

"Would you have thrown Olly's marbles into the lake?"

"No," replied Halloway, looking steadily back at her.

"Then you would have been very foolish," said Gerald, haughtily. "It was the only way to touch him. I was quite right to do it."

"You should be the best judge of your actions, Miss Vernor."

Gerald bowed without answer, and moved past him like an offended d.u.c.h.ess.

Halloway stood looking after her with an amused sparkle in his eyes.

"Miss Geraldine Vernor," he said to himself, "with all your beauty and your reputed accomplishments and intellect, you would yet do well to take a few lessons of my little friend Phebe Lane."

CHAPTER VII.

TRIED AS BY FIRE.

"Gerald, what are you thinking of?"

"I was wondering how soon you would let us have the lamp."

"I'll get it immediately, if you like, but it's so pleasant talking in the twilight. I could spend hours contentedly sitting here so with you."

"How reprehensibly idle!"

"No, I should be learning something all the time. You have always something to teach me. Or if you didn't feel like talking, I could just sit still and hold your hand and not need any thing more."

Gerald put her hand instinctively out of reach. "I beg you won't try it.

I hate having my hand held."

"Yes, I know you do. You hate being kissed, too. You hate being admired and made a fuss over. I don't suppose any thing would induce you to let me call you a pet name. O Gerald, I do wish you liked being loved!"

"But I do like it well enough. Of course every one likes being cared for and all that sort of thing. It's only the gushing and spooning and sentimentalizing that I can't endure. I never could, even as a child."

Phebe sat suddenly upright, away from Gerald. Perhaps even the mute caress of her att.i.tude jarred upon her friend. "To me the half of being loved would be the being told so," she said. "I should never weary of hearing it said over and over again."

"Bah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Gerald, "it would make me sick!" She got up as if the very thought were too much for her, and going to the window stood still there looking out. Phebe followed her with her eyes.

"I am afraid you are fated to be deadly sick all your life through, Gerald. What _will_ you do with your lovers?"