Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/79

Rh upon it, so it fell to pieces—the boy was forgotten.

But the child ran to the village to make his purchases feeling like a king. His work had been recognised as art for the first time. He skipped and jumped as he went, he was so glad; his heart beat loud with dreams. And everybody knows the song it sung, since everybody's heart has beaten the same over its first success. But the angry woman who had borne the boy turned into her house with a sigh.

"I sent him an hour ago," she said, "to fetch the meat. And he would have been there still, fiddling in the mud, if I had not looked out and seen him. He is no good, and he the eldest of them all." She looked around her flock of chubby, commonplace children, and sighed again that he was so unlike them.

When the boy had finished his shopping and was returning, he met the little girl coming to meet him. He clasped her hand in his free one, and swung it backwards and forwards as he walked. "You will wait for me till I grow up," he said; "and we will marry. I will buy you dresses of red silk, trimmed with gold, and you will have emeralds in your hair, and—and