should be married when they grew up, if they both
liked the plan. He seemed to forget all about this last part, "if they
both liked the plan." He liked the plan himself and he seemed to think
that that was enough. He had talked about it to Kathleen many times,
before they were both eighteen years old, and it troubled Kathleen so
that she tried never to see Terence when she could possibly help it.
She had always disliked him, though she had always tried not to show
it; but as they got a little older and she found that there was no
other way to keep away from him at all, she had to tell him so.
But do you suppose that made any difference with Terence? Well, it did
make a difference with him, but he did not let anybody see that it
did. When Kathleen told him for the first time that she did not like
him at all, he went away by himself. He went straight to the hill that
is in the north end of the Park, and there he threw himself down on
his face on the grass. For hours he lay there, trembling and crying,
and beating the ground with his feet and his fists. And it would take
another book as large as this to tell all that he was saying to
himself or to the grass, or to something under the grass--how can I
tell? And you would not want to read the book. It is not likely that
you will ever see anybody in such a rage as he was in. But at the end
of it he stood up and looked just as he usually did, and went straight
to the O'Briens' and stayed all the evening and kept as near Kathleen
as he could, and stared at her all the time. And he talked to her then
and afterward, just as if she had told him that she liked him better
than anybody else that she knew.
So Kathleen had to go to her grandmother, as she always did when she
was in any trouble, and tell her all about it. And her grandmother
told her that she and Terence were both a good deal too young to think
of anything of the sort, and that she would do all that she could to
help her. But she could not do much. She told John about it, and he
said that he should be sorry if the plan that he and Peter had made
could not be carried out, but he would forbid it himself, as long as
Terence was so lazy and so worthless and so bad as he was now. When he
got a little older, he hoped that everything would be better, and
there was no hurry about anything.
And though Terence made her so much trouble, Kathleen had many other
things to think about. She went to school and learned a great deal
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