more," observed Jill, in a pensive tone, wishing to show that
she felt all the dangers of impatience, but was sorry for the culprit.

"Did the boy ever forgive himself?" asked Mrs. Minot.

"No, 'm; I suppose not. But Jack didn't hit Frank, and feels real sorry,
I know."

"He might have, and hurt him very much. Our actions are in our own
hands, but the consequences of them are not. Remember that, my dear, and
think twice before you do anything."

"Yes, 'm, I will;" and Jill composed herself to consider what
missionaries usually did when the natives hurled tomahawks and
boomerangs at one another, and defied the rulers of the land.

Mrs. Minot wrote one page of a new letter, then stopped, pushed her
papers about, thought a little, and finally got up, saying, as if she
found it impossible to resist the yearning of her heart for the naughty
boy,--

"I am going to see if Jack is covered up, he is so helpless, and liable
to take cold. Don't stir till I come back."

"No, 'm, I won't."

Away went the tender parent to find her son studying Caesar for dear
life, and all the more amiable for the little gust which had blown away
the temporary irritability. The brothers were often called "Thunder
and Lightning," because Frank lowered and growled and was a good while
clearing up, while Jack's temper came and went like a flash, and the air
was all the clearer for the escape of dangerous electricity. Of course
Mamma had to stop and deliver a little lecture, illustrated by sad tales
of petulant boys, and punctuated with kisses which took off the edge of
these afflicting narratives.

Jill meantime meditated morally on the superiority of her own good
temper over the hasty one of her dear playmate, and just when she was
feeling unusually uplifted and secure, alas! like so many of us, she
fell, in the most deplorable manner.

Glancing about the room for something to do, she saw a sheet of paper
lying exactly out of reach, where it had fluttered from the table
unperceived. At first her eye rested on it as carelessly as it did on
the stray stamp Frank had dropped; then, as if one thing suggested the
other, she took it into her head that the paper was Frank's composition,
or, better still, a note to Annette, for the two corresponded when
absence or weather prevented the daily meeting at school.

"Wouldn't it be fun to keep it till he gives back Jack's stamps? It
would plague him so if it was a note, and I do believe it is, for
co