Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/75

 commiseratively demanded that Lonely forbear.

Indeed, Mrs. Sampson presented the startled and wondering New Boy with a huge slice of pound-cake for his bravery, and hoped that he would come regularly to Sunday-school, and always be kind to dumb animals, and not fight with Lionel Clarence, as did the other boys. And Lonely gazed at Lionel Clarence, and said he guessed there would n't be any fighting between them—for Lonely had his tribal pride as to whom he chose for his enemies.

Yet it was out of this untoward incident that sprang the immediate if incongruous friendship between Lonely and the Preacher's son. That very afternoon they met in secret, and being joined later by Annie Eliza and her dolls, they performed a long and elaborate funeral service over the Gubtills' dead canary. Then, touched with a common infection of grief, Lonely assisted in the disinterring of the remains, and was meekly luxuriating in the sorrow consequent upon a second and even more magnificent burial service, when Chamboro's young band of adventurers, drifting somewhat disconsolately and wearily homeward from their truant day