Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/127

 So she said that she didn't know about the paints. One would see. It depended perhaps not altogether upon whether it was good for a little boy to have a box of paints or not, but much on whether between now and his birthday, during all those intervening months, not some of the time, but all of the time, he was a good boy, a good, God-fearing, Christian little boy in whom his Dear Mother might repose a certain amount of confidence.

Now to obtain paints at this period in his career Edward would have committed any crime, would have stooped to any lie, duplicity or hypocrisy. He was even willing to be a good, well conducted little boy for every one of all the long days of a good many months. It seemed a small price to pay.

The school year had opened and he had not now so much time to draw. The boys teased him because he was going to be a clergyman, a career which seemed rather girlish to them. And his voice seesawed so violently between high and low that when he was called upon to recite the whole class tittered, and was reproved by a tittering teacher.

Toward Christmas, however, Edward's voice settled into a pleasant, engaging place—rather low down in the scale, with a husky quality. One day at recess he fought a battle in the hickory wood