ll, I won't, then," she answered, "if you'll teach me how to
catapult."

Hector did his best, both that day and several others. But I must say I
have my doubts as to whether catapults are meant for little girls. Dolly
tried over and over and over again, but she never could manage to hit
anything she aimed at. And at last her patience seemed exhausted.

"I'm tired of it," she said. "I'll give it to Bobby. I shan't try to
catapult any more."

And it would have been rather a good thing if she had kept to this
resolution.

[Illustration]

But the next day when she was out in the garden with her brothers,
admiring Hector's good aim and the wonderful way in which he hit a
little bell which he had hung high up on the branch of a tree as a sort
of target, it came over her that she would try once again.

"Look at that bird, up on the top of the kitchen-garden wall," she said.
"I'll have a go at it."

Hector laughed.

"I think the bird's quite safe," he said.

Dolly thought so too. She did not want to hurt the bird, she was really
speaking in fun. But all the same she aimed at it, and--oh, sad and
strange to say--_she hit it_! a quiver of the little wings, and the
tiny head dropped, and then--in a moment it had fallen to the foot of
the high wall on which it had perched so happily a moment before!

The children rushed forward breathlessly. Dolly could not believe that
she had hurt it, scarcely that she had hit it.

But alas! yes. It was quite dead.

Hector held it in his hand. The bright eyes were already glazed--the
feathers limp and dull.

And oh, worse and worse, it was a wren. A little innocent, harmless
wren.

Dolly's sobs were bitter.

"I'll never touch a catapult again," she said. "A nasty horrid cruel
thing it is. And I didn't really mean to hit the poor wren."

"It was only a fluke, then," said Hector, who, in spite of his sorrow
for the wren, had felt some admiration for his sister's skill.

"N--no, not that," she said. "I _did_ aim, but I never thought I'd hit
it. Still, Hector, it shows you I _can_ hit, you see;" and the thought
made her leave off crying for a moment or two. But the sight of the poor
little wren changed her triumph into sorrow again.

"I've done with shooting," she said, as she threw the unlucky catapult
away.

And then she covered up the dead wren in her handkerchief and went in to
tell her troubles to "mamma."

Her mother was very sorry too.

"You must think of it as a s