Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/177

 The New Boy entered into his tutorship with such pride and enthusiasm that Lionel Clarence's mother still again protested there was something good about the boy, and in her gratitude of heart overfed him on jelly-roll and ginger cookies.

Her first qualm of doubt came unexpectedly, a day or two later, when she was quietly and busily picking green currants for a deep-river pie.

Seeing an unexpected stir and movement at the back of the garden, she peered circumspectly through the bush, and there beheld Lonely, with drawn bow and arrow, calmly stalking one of her Silver Dorking hens. She saw him shadow the mildly protesting fowl from bush to bush, and when at last a favorable chance offered, deliberately take aim and shoot down his quarry. Before she could quite recover from her astonishment, the boy had seized the stunned chicken, promptly wrung its neck, and disappeared with it, through the hole in the back fence. That Lionel Clarence later joined in the dance about the pot, and made away with more than half of the carcass, and vowed it was the finest chicken