walk, and forget the
stone-throwing, when Dexter damped her enjoyment.

"Oh, here's a lark!" he cried, plunging down into a ditch, and
reappearing after a hunt in the long wet grass with a large greenish
frog.

"What have you found, Dexter!"

"A jolly old frog. Look here; I'll show you how the boys do up there at
the House."

"I think you had better not," said Helen, wincing.

"But it's such a game. You get a flat piece of wood, about so long, and
you lay it across a stone. Then you set the frog on one end, and
perhaps he hops off. If he does, you catch him again, and put him on
the end of the wood over and over again till he sits still, and he does
when he is tired. Then you have a stick ready, as if you were going to
play at cat, and you hit the end of the stick--"

"Oh!" ejaculated Helen.

"I don't mean the end where the frog is," cried Dexter quickly, as he
saw Helen's look of disgust; "I mean the other end; and then the frog
flies up in the air ever so high, and kicks out his legs as if he was
swimming, and--"

Dexter began his description in a bright, animated way, full of
gesticulation; but as he went on the expression in his companion's face
seemed to chill him. He did not understand what it meant, only he felt
that he was doing or saying something which was distasteful; and he
gradually trailed off, and stood staring with his narrative unfinished,
and the frog in his hand.

"Could you do that now, Dexter!" said Helen suddenly.

"Do it?" he faltered.

"Yes; with the frog."

"I haven't got a bit of flat wood, and I have no stick, and if I had--
I--you--I--"

He stopped short, with his head on one side, and his brows puckered up,
gazing into Helen's eyes. Then he looked down, at the frog, and back at
Helen.

"You don't mean it?" he said sharply. "You don't want me to? I know:
you mean it would hurt the frog."

"Would it hurt you, Dexter, if somebody put you on one end of a plank,
and then struck the other end!"

The boy took off his cap and scratched his head with his little finger,
the others being closed round the frog, which was turned upside down.

"The boys always used to do it up at the House," he said apologetically.

"Why!" said Helen gravely.

"Because it was such fun; but they always made them hop well first.
They'd begin by taking great long jumps, and then, as the boys hunted
them, the jumps would get shorter and shorter, and they'd be so tired
that it was easy to m