opened her mouth. The wide, firm little mouth always remained
closed, but the blue eyes burned fiercely, and the outraged little
heart, thumping furiously at its impotence, did its best to salve its
wounds with ceaseless repetition of its own private addition to the
prescribed form of morning and evening prayer.

Once, even Tom's dull wit caught something of meaning in the blaze of
the blue eyes.

"What are you saying, you little devil?" he growled, and released her so
suddenly that she fell on her knees in the mud.

And she put her hands together, as she was in the habit of doing, and
prayed, "O God, please kill brother Tom!"

"Little devil!" said brother Tom, with a startled red face, and made a
dash at her; but she had foreseen that and was gone like a flash.

One might have expected her childish comeliness to exercise something of
a mollifying effect on his brutality. On the contrary, it seemed but to
increase it. She was so sweet; he was so coarse. She was so small and
fragile; he was so big and strong. Her prettiness might work on others.
He would let her see and feel that he was not the kind to be fooled by
such things.

He had the elemental heartlessness of the savage, which recognises no
sufferings but its own, and refuses to be affected even by them.

When Nance's kitten, presented to her by their neighbour, Mrs. Helier
Baker, solved much speculation as to its sex by becoming a mother, Tom
gladly undertook the task of drowning the superfluous offspring. He got
so much amusement out of it that, for weeks, Nance's horrified inner
vision saw little blind heads, half-drowned and mewing piteously,
striving with feeble pink claws to climb out of the death-tub and being
ruthlessly set swimming again till they sank.

She hurled herself at Tom as he gloated over his enjoyment, and would
have asked nothing better than to treat him as he was treating the
kittens--righteous retribution in her case, not enjoyment!--but he was
too strong for her. He simply kicked out behind, and before she could
get up had thrust one of his half-drowned victims into the neck of her
frock, and the clammy-dead feel of it and its pitiful screaming set her
shuddering for months whenever she thought of it.

But now and again her tormentor overpassed the bounds and got his
reward--to Nance's immediate satisfaction but subsequent increased
tribulation. For whenever he got a thrashing on her account he never
failed to pay her out in the