Page 35 - An Australian Lassie

"Thanks," he said. "T'm not taking any this trip."

"Come on," urged Betty.

"T don't fight girls, thanks."

Betty began to cry in a heart-broken desperate way.

"Tt's not me," she said. "Tt's Cyril. Tt's Cyril. Oh, it's Cyril!"

But Brown, smiling darkly, turned from her, jumped over the fence, and took his way through the banana
grove to his home.

And what pen could tell of his heaviness of heart, and great shame in that he had thrashed a girl. He could feel
her light weight yet as he swung her round, hear her girlish voice crying, "We Bruces fight till we die!" see
her thin white face in the moonlight as her hat fell off, and she looked at him and said--

"Come on, coward, bully!"

How he tingled with shame. Coward, bully! Yes, he had hit a girl.

Betty started for home at a brisk run, for during her adventure the night had advanced, and her imagination
peopled the surrounding bush with bogeys, and imps and elves.

And as she ran, sobs broke from her, solely on account of her physical woes.

Within the wicket gate she walked slowly. How could fear of outer darkness remain, when the dinning-room
window sent such a bar of light beyond.

She crept softly along the verandah to the window and peeped in. Her father was lying on the old cane lounge,
his eyes upon her mother who sat at the piano, in a pretty fresh dress, flower-like as ever. For a space, while
little boy-Betty looked, she just touched the keys tenderly as if she loved them like her flowers, then she
struck a few chords, and began to sing "Home, Sweet Home," in her sweet girlish voice.

And Betty turned away, the tears running down her cheeks, and her small heart aching.

"T've been bad again," she said, "and T meant to be good always. T don't believe you can be good till you are
grown up." She ran along the passage into the little bedroom which she and Dot and Nancy shared, and she
fell down by Dot's quiet white bed and buried her face in the quilt.

"Bad again," she sobbed. "T've been bad again. Oh, T'm glad T got thrashed, it ought to do me good." But it is
to be feared her gladness was not very deep, because a sense of great satisfaction swept over her as she
remembered, she had kicked, really kicked, big John Brown.