Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/172

162 face, as though she had been long parted from him.

But every day, from that forward, she kept the child in strict surveyance. He grew timid under the reproachful eyes he always felt were upon him. As the years passed they grew further apart; he understood she could not love him, but did not know why, and he was conscious that he was afraid of her. Often when she called him he would come to her slowly, and hang back at the last, frightened beneath her eyes. Then she would smile a bitter smile, thinking it was the spirit of the menial coming out in him, and showing distress before its superior. Once when he had given a false answer to her she laughed in his face. How could she have thought him an Osborne, the cowardly, lying, beggar's brat! Every day as she watched him she seemed to find the defects in him she credited his class with. She had discovered him picking the prettiest cakes from the plate at tea for himself. She had found him beating a boy smaller than himself without a reason. The reason was one the child would sooner have died than tell. The smaller boy had called her an ugly name. She thought