Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/35

 When the family returned, he was cutting out figures from the "Graphic" supplements and acting new and wonderful games. He did not go downstairs; Frankie came up—full of the news of the picnic and the steamboat trip down the river and the glories of the merry-go-round—prepared, perhaps, to gloat over the fallen estate of his brother. Don did not even notice him. Frankie insisted on being heard. Don gathered up his pictures and barricaded himself in the bedroom.

He remained there until he was called to supper.

"You have been a bad boy, Don," his mother said to him that night. "Your father's angry with you."

He would not look at her. His face was still swollen from his morning's tears, and streaked with dirt, and smudged with powder. His fingers were scorched. There was a hole burned in the sleeve of his jacket.

"What have you been doing?"

"Playing."

"Aren't you sorry?"

He did not answer.

"Say that you're sorry, or I shall not kiss you good-night."

He did not feel that he was sorry, and he did not speak. She smoothed his hair with her thin hand, kissed him, and sent him away.

"I don't seem to understand him any more," she confessed to his father with a sigh.

His father replied: "He's growing too big to be running around here, wild. He should be at school."

And that was the decree of judgment which was