One minute Helen Grayson was delighted at the freshness of nature, and
the genuine delight and enthusiasm displayed by her companion, the next
there came quite a cloud over everything, for it seemed to her that here
was a bright young spirit corroded and spoiled by the surroundings to
which it had been accustomed.
"What's that? What flower's this? Oh, look at that butterfly! Here,
Miss Grayson, see here--a long thin fly with his body all blue; and such
lovely wings. There's another with purple edges to it. Oh, how
lovely!"
Helen's eyes brightened, and she began to enjoy her walk, and forget the
stone-throwing, when Dexter damped her enjoyment.
"Oh, here's a lark!" he cried, plunging down into a ditch, and
reappearing after a hunt in the long wet grass with a large greenish
frog.
"What have you found, Dexter!"
"A jolly old frog. Look here; I'll show you how the boys do up there at
the House."
"I think you had better not," said Helen, wincing.
"But it's such a game. You get a flat piece of wood, about so long, and
you lay it across a stone. Then you set the frog on one end, and
perhaps he hops off. If he does, you catch him again, and put him on
the end of the wood over and over again till he sits still, and he does
when he is tired. Then you have a stick ready, as if you were going to
play at cat, and you hit the end of the stick--"
"Oh!" ejaculated Helen.
"I don't mean the end where the frog is," cried Dexter quickly, as he
saw Helen's look of disgust; "I mean the other end; and then the frog
flies up in the air ever so high, and kicks out his legs as if he was
swimming, and--"
Dexter began his description in a bright, animated way, full of
gesticulation; but as he went on the expression in his companion's face
seemed to chill him. He did not understand what it meant, only he felt
that he was doing or saying something which was distasteful; and he
gradually trailed off, and stood staring with his narrative unfinished,
and the frog in his hand.
"Could you do that now, Dexter!" said Helen suddenly.
"Do it?" he faltered.
"Yes; with the frog."
"I haven't got a bit of flat wood, and I have no stick, and if I had--
I--you--I--"
He stopped short, with his head on one side, and his brows puckered up,
gazing into Helen's eyes. Then he looked down, at the frog, and back at
Helen.
"You don't mean it?" he said sharply. "You don't want me to? I know:
you mean it would hurt the frog."
"Would it hurt you, Dexter, if somebody put you on one end of a plank,
and then struck the other end!"
The boy took off his cap and scratched his head with his little finger,
the others being closed round the frog, which was turned upside down.
"The boys always used to do it up at the House," he said apologetically.
"Why!" said Helen gravely.
"Because it was such fun; but they always made them hop well first.
They'd begin by taking great long jumps, and then, as the boys hunted
them, the jumps would get shorter and shorter, and they'd be so tired
that it was easy to make them sit still on the piece of wood."
"And when they had struck the wood, and driven it into the air, what did
they do to the poor thing then?"
"Sent it up again."
"And then?"
"Oh, they caught it--some of the boys did--caught it like a ball."
"Have you ever done so?"
Dexter shuffled about from foot to foot, and looked at the prospect,
then at the frog, and then slowly up at the clear, searching eyes
watching him.
"Yes," he said, with a sigh; "lots of times."
"And was it to save the poor thing from being hurt by the fall on the
hard ground!"
Dexter tried hard to tell a lie, but somehow he could not.
"No," he said slowly. "It was to put it back on the stick, so as the
other boys could not catch it first."
"What was done then!"
Dexter was silent, and he seemed to be taking a wonderful deal of
interest in the frog, which was panting hard in his hot hand, with only
its comical face peeping out between his finger and thumb, the bright
golden irised eyes seeming to stare into his, and the loose skin of its
throat quivering.
"Well, Dexter, why don't you tell me!"
"Am I to?" said the boy slowly.
"Of course."
There were a few more moments of hesitation, and then the boy said with
an effort--
"They used--"
He paused again.
"We used to get lots of stones and shy at 'em till they was dead."
There was a long silence here, during which Helen Grayson watched the
play in the boy's countenance, and told herself that there was a
struggle going on between the good and evil in the young nature, and
once more she asked herself how she could hesitate in the task before
her.
Meanwhile it was very uncomfortable for the frog. The day was hot;
Dexter's hand was hotter still; and though there was the deliciously
cool gurgling river close at hand, with plenty of sedge, and the roots
of water grasses, where it might hide and enjoy its brief span of life,
it was a prisoner; and if frogs can think and know anything about the
chronicles of their race, it was thinking of its approaching fate, and
wondering how many of its young tadpoles would survive to be as big as
its parent, and whether it was worth while after all.
"Dexter," said Helen suddenly, and her voice sounded so clear and
thrilling that the boy started, and looked at her in a shame-faced
manner. "Suppose you saw a boy--say like--like--"
"That chap we saw with the hat and stick? him who sneered at me?"
Helen winced in turn. She had young Edgar Danby in her mind, but was
about to propose some other young lad for her illustration; but the boy
had divined her thought, and she did not shrink now from the feeling
that above all things she must be frank if she wished her companion to
be.
"Yes; young Danby. Suppose you saw him torturing a frog, a lowly
reptile, but one of God's creatures, in that cruel way, what would you
say, now?"
"I should say he was a beast."
Helen winced again, for the declaration was more emphatic and to the
point than she had anticipated.
"And what would you do?" he continued.
"I'd punch his head, and take the frog away from him. Please, Miss
Grayson," he continued earnestly; "I didn't ever think it was like that.
We always used to do it--we boys always did, and--and--"
"You did not know then what you know now. Surely, Dexter, you will
never be so cruel again."
"If you don't want me to, I won't," he said quickly.
"Ah, but I want you to be frank and manly for a higher motive than that,
Dexter," she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder. "There, I will
not say any more now. What are you going to do!"
"Put him in the river, and let him swim away."
The boy darted to the side of the rippling stream, stooped down, and
lowered the hand containing the frog into the water, opened it, and for
a moment or two the half-dead reptile sat there motionless. Then there
was a vigorous kick, and it shot off into the clear water, diving right
down among the water weeds, and disappearing from their view.
"There!" said Dexter, jumping up and looking relieved. "You are not
cross with me now!"
"I have not been cross with you," she said; "only a little grieved."
"Couldn't he swim!" cried the boy, who was anxious to turn the
conversation. "I can swim like that, and dive too. We learned in our
great bath, and--Oh, I say, hark at the bullocks."
Helen listened, and could hear a low, muttering bellow in the next
meadow, accompanied by the dull sounds of galloping hoofs, which were
near enough to make the earth of the low, marshy bottom through which
the river ran quiver slightly where they stood.
Just then there was a piercing shriek, as of a woman in peril, and
directly after a man's voice heard shouting for help.