Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/77



Y the side of a river near Dublin a little boy of twelve was crouching. He was punching and rolling a handful of the sticky clay from the banks into the shape of a man's head. Not far from him an artist was sketching, and by the boy's side a small girl sat, her eyes and mouth open in amazed admiration of her comrade's work. The call of a woman's distant voice startled the three. And the boy sprang to his feet, so that the clay he was modelling fell from him and rolled to the artist's side. The man took up the work, and turning it in his hands, found it bore a rough resemblance to himself.

"Why, it is clever," he said. "Where did you learn, boy?" The child, forgetting an angry woman was watching him from the distance, flushed beneath the praise.

"I didn't learn," he said.