d; "thank you very much. I am very sorry indeed for
the children," she went on, for she couldn't have helped seeing how we
were crying; and a nice look came into her eyes, which made us like her
better. She was very pretty. I forget if I said so. "Shall I--shall I
bring Rollo some day to see you?"

But we shook our heads.

"No, thank you," Persis managed to get out.

"Ah," she said, "I'm sorry; but I understand."

And then we liked her _quite_.

We trotted on beside papa, none of us speaking. At last Persis touched
me.

"Archie," she said, "I think it's for a punishment. May I tell?"

I just nodded my head.

Then Persis went close up to papa and put her hand through his arm.

"Papa," she said, "we've something to tell you. We're not crying _only_
for Bruno, we're unhappy because--because we've not been good."

"We've not been _honest_," I said. That word "honest" had been sticking
in my throat ever since the day papa had said it when he was speaking
about it being right to advertise the dog. And now, when _I_ said it, I
felt as if I was going to choke. It felt so awful, you don't know.

Papa looked very grave, but he held out his other hand to me, and I was
glad of that.

"Tell me all about it," he said; and then we told him everything--all
about how in our real hearts we had known, or _almost_ known, where
Bruno came from, but how we had tried to pretend to ourselves--separately,
I mean; Persis to herself and me to myself--that we didn't know, so that
we wouldn't even say it to each other, and how it did seem now as if
this had come for a punishment.

Papa was very kind, so kind that we went on to tell him how great the
temptation had been, how _dreadfully_ we had longed for a dog, and how
it had seemed that our only chance of ever having one would be one
coming of itself, like Bruno had done.

"Why did you not tell mamma or me how very, very much you wished for
one?" asked papa. "It would have been better than bottling it up so
between yourselves. You have made yourselves think you wished for one
even more than you really did."

But we couldn't quite agree with that.

"We did speak of it sometimes," we said, "but we knew mamma didn't want
to have a dog--not in London. And----" but there we stopped. We really
didn't quite know why we hadn't said more about it. I think children
often keep their fancies to themselves without quite knowing why. But we
didn't think it had been a fancy only, after all. "