"I can't get on. I'm afraid," moaned the depressed little mortal.
"There's nothing to hurt. If you fell in, you couldn't hurt. Afraid! You—a boy!" said Jean, with infinite disdain.
She had been trained to look with contempt upon cowardice, especially a boy's cowardice. Oswald never showed fear; and Oswald was her hero.
But the tender and pitying side of her nature asserted itself, when she looked at the little fellow's white cheeks; not pale only, but dead-white, as with abject terror; and at the small shaking hands.
"Come!" she said gently. "I'll take care of you. I won't let you slip. Stand up, and hold me tight. I'll take you across."
She put a protecting arm round him, and guided his steps with a mother-like care, droll yet pretty in one so young. Jean had all the instincts of womanhood, though her recollections of a mother's love were dim.
"There!" she said, as they reached the bank on the Rectory side.
His face having been turned that way, Jean had taken it for granted that he wished to cross.
"Now you are all right. You see how easy the stones are, so you won't be frightened again. Boys never ought to be afraid. Oswald isn't!" proudly, with a gleam in her greenish-brown eyes. "But you are such a mite! Where do you want to go?"
"I want to go home," came plaintively in answer.