a little, for she had
done two naughty things, and the pathetic quality of her father's
music made her wish with all the intensity of her sensitive soul that
she might confess to some one what she had done, but it was all too
peaceful and sweet now to tell her mother of naughty things, and,
anyway, she could not confess before the whole family, so she tried to
repent very hard and tell God all about it. Somehow it was always
easier to tell God about things; for she reasoned, if God was
everywhere and knew everything, then he knew she had been bad, and had
seen her all the time, and all she need do was to own up to it,
without explaining everything in words, as she would have to do to her
mother.

Brother Bobby's bare feet swung close to her cheek as they dangled
from her mother's knee, and she turned and kissed them, first one and
then the other, with eager kisses. He stirred and kicked out at her
fretfully.

"Don't wake him, dear," said her mother.

Then Betty drew up her knees and clasped them about with her arms, and
hid her face on them while she repented very hard. Mother had said
that very day that she never felt troubled about the baby when Betty
had care of him, and that very day she had recklessly taken him up
into the barn loft, climbing behind him and guiding his little feet
from one rung of the perpendicular ladder to another, teaching him to
cling with clenched hands to the rounds until she had landed him in
the loft. There she had persuaded him he was a swallow in his nest,
while she had taken her fill of the delight of leaping from the loft
down into the bay, where she had first tossed enough hay to make a
soft lighting place for the twelve-foot leap.

Oh, the joy of it--flying through the air! If she could only fly up
instead of down! Every time she climbed back into the loft she would
stop and cuddle the little brother and toss hay over him and tell him
he was a baby bird, and she was the mother bird, and must fly away and
bring him nice worms. She bade him look up to the rafters above and
see the mother birds flying out and in, while the little birds just
sat still in their nests and opened their mouths. So Bobby sat still,
and when she returned, obediently opened his mouth; but alas! he
wearied of his role in the play, and at last crept to the very edge of
the loft at a place where there was no hay spread beneath to break his
fall; and when Betty looked up and saw his sweet baby face peering
do