"Well, it's pretty bad," he said, in a deep voice of regret. "I don't
wonder it breaks you up. Such a little thing to do so much mischief--and
so easy to have avoided it all. I reckon you'll take care of your banana
skins after this. But I like the way you own up, Just, and so will
Celia. That's something. You haven't been a sneak in addition to being
thoughtless. It would have been hard to forgive you if I had found it
out while you kept still. It's pretty hard as it is," he could not help
adding, as his imagination pictured Celia spending her winter as a
cripple.

Just said not a word, but the outline of his profile against the fading
light at the window was so suggestive of boyish despair that the elder
brother walked over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"It gives you a chance to make it up to her in every way you can," he
said. "There are a lot of things you can do for her, and I shall expect
you to try to square the account a little."

"I will! Oh, I will!" cried poor Just, who had longed for his mother in
this crisis, and had found facing the elder brother, whom he both
admired and feared, harder than anything he had ever had to do. "I'll do
anything in the world for her, if she'll only forgive me."

"She'll forgive you, for she's made that way. It's forgiving yourself
that can't be done."

"I never shall."

"Don't. If I thought you would, I'd thrash you on the spot," said Lanse,
grimly, sure that a wholesome remorse was to be encouraged. Then he
relented sufficiently to say in a tone considerably less severe:

"Go and wash up, and begin your good resolutions by getting down and
seeing to the kitchen fire. It's undoubtedly burnt itself out by this
time. There's probably no dinner for anybody, but we can't mind little
things like that to-night."

He went to Celia's room at last, feeling many cares upon him, a
sensation which an empty, stomach did not tend to relieve. He found his
sister able to give him a very pale-faced but courageous smile, and to
receive his earnest sympathy with a faint:

"Never mind, dear. Don't worry. It might have been worse."

"That seems to be everybody's motto, so I'll accept it. We'll take
courage, and you shall have us all on our knees, since yours are laid up
for repairs."

"You haven't had your dinner, Lanse," murmured Celia. She was suffering
severely, but she could not relax anything of her anxiety for the family
welfare.

"Oh, I forgot there was such a thin