cry a bark, a howl, a yawn.

Nicky heard it, and he looked out of the schoolroom window. He saw the
red smear on the white curly breast. He saw his father in his shirt
sleeves, carrying something in his arms that he had covered with
his coat.

Under the tree of Heaven Dorothy and Michael, crouching close against
their mother, cried quietly. Frances was crying, too; for it was she who
would have to tell Nicky.

Dorothy tried to console him.

"Jerry's eyes would have turned green, if he had lived, Nicky. They
would, really."

"I wouldn't have minded. They'd have been Jerry's eyes."

"But he wouldn't have looked like Jerry."

"I wouldn't have cared what he looked like. He'd have _been_ Jerry."

"I'll give you Jane, Nicky, and all the kittens she ever has, if that
would make up."

"It wouldn't. You don't seem to understand that it's Jerry I want. I
wish you wouldn't talk about him."

"Very well," said Dorothy, "I won't."

Then Grannie tried. She recommended a holy resignation. God, she said,
had given Jerry to Nicky, and God had taken him away.

"He didn't give him me, and he'd no right to take him. Dorothy wouldn't
have done it. She was only ragging. But when God does things," said
Nicky savagely, "it isn't a rag."

He hated Grannie, and he hated Mr. Parsons, and he hated God. But he
loved Dorothy who had given him Jerry.

Night after night Frances held him in her arms at bed-time while Nicky
said the same thing. "If--if I could stop seeing him. But I keep on
seeing him. When he sat on the mustard and cress. And when he bit me
with his sleep-bites. And when he looked at me out of the tree of
Heaven. Then I hear that little barking grunt he used to make when he
was playing with himself--when he dashed off into the bushes.

"And I can't _bear_ it."

Night after night Nicky cried himself to sleep.

For the awful thing was that it had been all his fault. If he had kept
Jerry's weight down Boris couldn't have caught him.

"Daddy said so, Mummy."

Over and over again Frances said, "It wasn't your fault. It was
Don-Don's. He left the door open. Surely you can forgive Don-Don?" Over
and over again Nicky said, "I do forgive him."

But it was no good. Nicky became first supernaturally subdued and
gentle, then ill. They had to take him away from home, away from the
sight of the garden, and away from Mr. Parsons, forestalling the
midsummer holidays by two months.

Nicky at the seaside was troublesome and h