o white and clean and square to hurt anything that can't hit
back," continued the Master. "And you are not. That's the difference
between you. One of the several million differences,--all of them in
Lad's favor. When a child begins life by being cruel to dumb animals,
it's a pretty bad sign for the way he's due to treat his fellow-humans
in later years,--if ever any of them are at his mercy. For your own
sake, learn to behave at least as decently as a dog. If--"

"You let me down, you big bully!" squalled Cyril, bellowing with
impotent fury. "You let me down! I--"

"Certainly," assented the Master, lowering him to the floor. "I didn't
hurt you. I only held you so you couldn't run out of the room, before
I'd finished speaking; as you did, the time I caught you putting red
pepper on Lad's food. He--"

"You wouldn't dare touch me, if my folks were here, you big bully!"
screeched the child, in a veritable mania of rage; jumping up and down
and actually foaming at the mouth. "But I'll tell 'em on you! See if I
don't! I'll tell 'em how you slung me around and said I was worsen a
dirty dog like Lad. And Daddy'll lick you for it. See if he don't! He--"

The Master could not choke back a laugh; though the poor Mistress
looked horribly distressed at the maniac outburst, and strove
soothingly to check it. She, like the Master, remembered now that
Cyril's doting mother had spoken of the child's occasional fits of red
wrath. But this was the first glimpse either of them had had of these.
Hitherto, craft had served Cyril's turn better than fury.

At sound of the Master's unintentional laugh the unfortunate child went
quite beside himself in his transport of rage.

"I won't stay in your nasty old house!" he shrieked. "I'm going to the
very first house I can find. And I'm going to tell 'em how you hammered
a little feller that hasn't any folks here to stick up for him. And
I'll get 'em to take me in and send a tel'gram to Daddy and Mother to
come save me. I--"

To the astonishment of both his hearers, Cyril broke off chokingly in
his yelled tirade; caught up a bibelot from the table, hurled it with
all his puny force at Lad, the innocent cause of the fracas; and then
rushed from the room and from the house.

The Mistress stared after him, dumfounded; his howls and the jarring
slam of the house door echoing direfully in her ears. It was the Master
who ended the instant's hush of amaze.

"Whenever I've heard a grown man say he