Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/341

 gentle, and had sat down on a seat in one of the side-walks. The sun shone; there was not a cloud in the sky; he saw daffodils nodding heads of sensuous gold, and beyond a grove of budding lilacs a row of old houses spread a glimmering whiteness.

Kit heard shouts, a scuffling of young feet. Half a dozen urchins, having with a lucky stone shot broken the wing of a sparrow, had captured the creature, tied a thread to one of its legs and attached a white paper bag to the other end of the thread. Then, they had let the bird go, and were following up its desperate and broken little flutterings, shying their caps at it, and shouting.

Kit got up to intervene, but someone else was before him, a tall girl in soft apple green who rose with swiftness from a seat farther along the path. Her intervention was fierce and sudden, selecting the biggest of the children, and taking him by the coat collar. She cuffed him with vigour, and the boy, responding like the little savage animal, kicked at her ankles. Kit took two strides forward, and then turned and resumed his seat. His interference would have been superfluous, for the Green Lady went on with her cuffing until the boy had ceased to respond with kicks. She held him by the collar, and talked him into tears.

"Now—how do—you—like it? How do you think the sparrow liked it? You little beast."

Releasing him she went to catch the bird, and having freed its leg from the trailing thread and paper, she held it in her hollowed hands with that small group of depressed children staring at her.

"Who threw the stone?"

She got no answer, and stroking the bird's head with a finger, she turned fierce eyes upon the sportsmen.

"Just think—now. Supposing one of you were left out here with a broken leg, and with a lot of tigers about? It is so easy to throw stones,—but you can't mend a broken wing. No one can."

She left them dawdling and depressed, and with the bird in her hand went past Christopher's seat, walking with a fierce, swift litheness. Her green costume was touched at the throat and wrists with threads of gold. She wore a little black hat that came down low over her broad straight forehead, and from under the brim two jet black curls painted