d to see father's recognition that babyhood was
over for his small son.

Mother stood in the door and watched him go. She had been crying again,
a little; she had even wanted to keep him at home. But father had said,
"No, let him go; as well now as to-morrow," and so she had kissed him
and cried again, a little. And then she had begged him to "try to keep
away from those bad little boys," and to "play only with good boys who
did not want to fight"; and Bob had said yes--doubtfully. He waved his
hand to her from the gate, and again from the corner of the block, and
then he set his face once more toward school, and walked very fast.

It was five o'clock when Bob came home again. School closed at four, but
the clock on the library mantel was tinkling five when he opened the
door and closed it very softly. He didn't want mother to see him just
then.

He was trembling and very white--his little mirror by the window showed
him that. There was a brown-and-blue bruise just in the corner of his
little brown eyebrow, of which he had felt carefully a dozen times on
the way home, but which did not look so big in the glass as it had felt.
There was a rubbed place on his chin, and the soft knuckles of his hands
were grimy and stained. He laid his school-bag and box carefully on a
chair, and went to look out the window for a moment. And then a strange
feeling came over him.

--This was his little room; yes, it was his--the same little room; the
same white curtains, the same little window, the same view of the little
green door-yard and the apple-tree and the cedar-hedge; the same soft
sunset light coming in upon him where it had come so many, many other
evenings, ever since he could remember. But the boy--that little boy who
had looked upon it all, who had lived there and loved the white curtains
and the sun and the apple-tree--where was he? he wondered.

When he closed his eyes he could see just one thing--one whirling,
seething vision: a ring of boys, excited, eager, yelling, laughing,
cheering, with only here and there a frightened face; and there in the
midst himself and another--some one who was striking and kicking and
scratching at him, but whose blows he did not seem to feel, so hard and
fierce and fast he himself was striking, and so hotly ran his blood. And
in his ears were ringing the cries which had gone up at the end, when
that other boy--he of the curly hair--had suddenly, at last, turned from
him and run away throu