“Aw, it isn’t a bit like hide-and-seek, is it, Mama?” Rufus cut in. “Hidenseek’s just a game, just a game. God doesn’t fool around playing games, does He, Mama! Does He! Does He!”
“Shame on you, Rufus,” his mother said warmly, and not without relief. “Why, shame on you!” For Catherine’s face had swollen and her mouth had bunched tight, and she glared from her brother to her mother and back again with scalding hot eyes.
“Well He doesn’t,” Rufus insisted, angry and bewildered at the turn the discussion had taken.
“That’s enough, Rufus,” his mother whipped out sternly, and leaned across and patted Catherine’s hand, which made Catherine’s chin tremble and her tears overflow. “That’s all right, little wicker! That’s all right! He doesn’t play games. Rufus is right about that, but it is, someways it is like hide-and-seek. You’re ab-so-lootly right!”
But with this, Catherine was dissolved, and Rufus sat aghast, less at her crying, which made him angry and jealous, than at his sudden solitude. But her crying was so miserable that, angry and jealous as he was, he became ashamed, then sorry for her, and was trying, helplessly, to find a way of showing that he was sorry when his mother glanced up at him fiercely and said, “Now you march and get ready for school. I ought to tell Daddy, you’re a bad boy!”
At the door, a few minutes later, when she leaned to kiss him good-bye and saw his face, she mistook the cause of it and said, more gently but very earnestly: “Rufus, I can see you’re sorry, but you mustn’t be mean to Catherine. She’s just a little girl, your little sister, and you mustn’t ever be unkind to her and hurt her feelings. Do you understand? Do you, Rufus?”
He nodded, and felt terribly sorry for his sister and for himself because of the gentleness in his mother’s voice.
