and pain. He went up into his own bedroom and bolted
the door, and wildly wished that he was a Red Indian, and that taking
scalps was not forbidden in Clapham. Billson's, he reflected gloomily,
would have been a sandy-coloured scalp, and a nice beginning to a
scalp-album.

Presently he stopped crying, and let his little sister in. She had been
crying, too, outside the door, ever since he came home and pushed past
her on the stairs. She pitied his bruised face, and said it was a shame
of Billson Minor to hit a boy littler than he was.

'I'm not so very little,' said Hildebrand; 'and you know how brave I am.
Why, it was only last week that I was the chief of the mighty tribe of
Moccasins, who waged war against Bill Billson, the Vulture-faced
Redskin----'

He told the story to its gory end, and Ethel liked it very much, and
hoped it wasn't wrong to make up such things. She couldn't quite believe
it all.

Then she went down, and Hildebrand had to wash his face for dinner; and
when he looked at the boy in the looking-glass and saw the black eye
Billson Minor had given him, and the cut lip from the same giver, he
clenched his fist and said:

'I wish I could make things true by saying them. Wouldn't I bung up old
Billson's peepers, that's all?'

'Well, you can if you like,' said the boy in the glass, whom Hildebrand
had thought was his own reflection.

'What?' said he, with his mouth open. He was horribly startled.

'You can if you like,' said the looking-glass boy again. 'I'll give you
your wish. Will you have it?'

'Is this a fairy-tale?' asked Hildebrand cautiously.

'Yes,' said the boy.

Hildebrand had never expected to be allowed to take part in a
fairy-tale, and at first he could hardly believe in such luck.

'Do you mean to say,' he said, 'that if I say I found a pot of gold in
the garden yesterday I did find a pot of gold?'

'No; you'll find it to-morrow. The thing works backwards, you see, like
all looking-glass things. You know your "Alice," I suppose? There's only
one condition: you won't be able to see yourself in the looking-glass
any more!'

'Who wants to,' said Hildebrand.

'And things you say to _yourself_ don't count.'

'There's always Ethel,' said Ethel's brother.

'You accept, then?' said the boy in the glass.

'Rather!'

'Right' And with that the looking-glass boy vanished, and Hildebrand was
left staring at the mirror, which now reflected only the wash-hand-stand
and the chest of