at this, too, would last, and Ethel would
go on being blind always. So he lay face down on his bed and cried, and
was sorry, and wished with all his heart that he had been a good boy,
and had never looked in the glass, and wished to bung up the eyes of
Billson Minor, who, after all, was not such a bad sort of chap.

When he had cried till he could not cry any more he got up, and went to
the looking-glass to see if his eyes were red, which is always
interesting. He never could remember that he couldn't see himself in the
glass now. Then suddenly he knew what to do. He ran down into the
street, and said to the first person he met:

'I say, I saw the looking-glass boy yesterday, and he let me off things
coming true, and Ethel was all right again.'

It was a policeman, and the constable boxed his ears, and promised to
run him in next time he had any of his cheek. But Hildebrand went home
calmer, and he read 'The Jungle Book' aloud to Ethel all the evening.

Next morning he ran to his looking-glass, and it was strange and
wonderful to him to see his own reflection again after all these weeks
of a blank mirror, and of parting his hair as well as he could just by
feeling. But it wasn't his own reflection, of course: it was the
looking-glass boy.

'I say, you look very different to what you did that day,' said
Hildebrand slowly.

'So do you,' said the boy.

That other day, which was weeks ago, the looking-glass boy had been
swollen and scowling and angry, with a black eye and a cut lip, and
revengeful looks and spiteful words. Now he looked pale and a little
thinner, but his eyes were only anxious, and his mouth was kind. It was
just the same ugly shape as ever, but it looked different. And
Hildebrand was as like the boy in the glass as one pin is like another
pin.

'I say,' said Hildebrand suddenly and earnestly, 'let me off; I don't
want it any more, thank you. And oh, do--do make my sister all right
again.'

'Very well,' said the boy in the looking-glass; 'I'll let you off for
six months. If you haven't learned to speak the truth by then--well,
you'll see. Good-bye.'

He held out his hand, and Hildebrand eagerly reached out to shake it. He
had forgotten the looking-glass, and it smashed against his fist, and
cracked all over. He never saw the boy again, and he did not want to.

When he went down Ethel's eyes were all right again, and the doctor
thought it was _his_ doing, and was as proud as a King and as pleas