"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red House, "is it now?"

"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.

"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would you like it if your father was sent to prison, and n.o.body would speak to you?"

"Father's always kep' hisself respectable," said the girl with the dirty blue ribbon. "You can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself respectable, you can't, miss."

"And do none of you speak to him?"

The other children put their fingers in their mouths, and looked silly, showing plainly that they didn't.

"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little chap?" said Mrs. Bax.

No answer transpired.

"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was _your_ father?"

"My father always kep' hisself respectable," the red-haired girl said again.

"Well, I shall ask him to come and play with us," said Mrs. Red House.

"Little pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by the author and Mr.

Red House.

But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that no one overheard except Mrs. R.

H. and the present author.

"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor little pariah wouldn't like it.

And these kids only do what their parents teach them."

If the author didn't know what a stainless gentleman Mr. Red House is he would think he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen wouldn't say.

"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr. Red House went on; "look here, _our_ kids--who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"

We all instantly said, "_I_ will!"

The present author was chosen to be the one.

When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the Oswald that generally exists hated being out of the games. Yet the whole Oswald, both the best and the ordinary, was pleased that he was the one chosen to be a detachment of consolation.

He went out under the great archway, and as he went he heard the games beginning again. This made him feel n.o.ble, and yet he was ashamed of feeling it. Your feelings are a beastly nuisance, if once you begin to let yourself think about them. Oswald soon saw the broken boots of the boy whose father was in jail so n.o.body would play with him, standing on the stones near the top of the wall where it was broken to match the boots.

He climbed up and said, "Hullo!"

To this remark the boy replied, "Hullo!"

Oswald now did not know what to say. The sorrier you are for people the harder it is to tell them so.

But at last he said--

"I've just heard about your father being where he is. It's beastly rough luck. I hope you don't mind my saying I'm jolly sorry for you."

The boy had a pale face and watery blue eyes. When Oswald said this his eyes got waterier than ever, and he climbed down to the ground before he said--

"I don't care so much, but it do upset mother something crool."

It is awfully difficult to console those in affliction. Oswald thought this, then he said--

"I say; never mind if those beastly kids won't play with you. It isn't your fault, you know."

"Nor it ain't father's neither," the boy said; "he broke his arm a-falling off of a rick, and he hadn't paid up his club money along of mother's new baby costing what it did when it come, so there warn't nothing--and what's a hare or two, or a partridge? It ain't as if it was pheasants as is as dear to rear as chicks."

Oswald did not know what to say, so he got out his new pen-and-pencil-combined and said--

"Look here! You can have this to keep if you like."

The pale-eyed boy took it and looked at it and said--

"You ain't foolin' me?"

And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt most awfully rum and uncomfy, and though he wanted most frightfully to do something for the boy he felt as if he wanted to get away more than anything else, and he never was gladder in his life than when he saw Dora coming along, and she said--

"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired and I'd like to sit down a bit."

She got the boy to sit down beside her, and Oswald went back to the others.

Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away, and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been crying.

It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good, but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior thoughts.

And the next day she was but little better.

We were all paddling on the sands, but Dora would not. And presently Alice left us and went back to Dora, and we all saw across the sandy waste that something was up.

And presently Alice came down and said--

"Dry your feet and legs and come to a council. Dora wants to tell you something."

We dried our pink and sandy toes and we came to the council. Then Alice said: "I don't think H.O. is wanted at the council, it isn't anything amusing; you go and enjoy yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little crabs, H.O. dear."

H.O. said: "You always want me to be out of everything. I can be councils as well as anybody else."

"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones, "not if I give you a halfpenny to go and buy bulls-eyes with?"

So then he went, and Dora said--

"I can't think how I could do it when you'd all trusted me so. And yet I couldn't help it. I remember d.i.c.ky saying when you decided to give it me to take care of--about me being the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm not fit for any one to speak to. But it did seem the really right thing at the time, it really and truly did. And now it all looks different."

"What has she done?" d.i.c.ky asked this, but Oswald almost knew.