"Because Tom beat my black cat this morning and threw her into the pond, and she was everything I had." Hepsa burst into tears again, and little Genevieve's heart was so filled with compassion, that she sat down upon the dirty ground, at the side of the afflicted child, without ever thinking of the blue frock and clean pantalettes she was soiling.
"O, dear, dear!" she cried, shocked at Tom's cruelty. "How wicked he was! What made him do so,—your brother, too?" Genevieve thought in her heart that little brother, of whom she so often thought, never would have done such a thing.
Hepsa looked up half angrily, as she replied:
"You needn't keep telling me he is my
brother! I'm sure I don't want him to be, and wish he wasn't. I don't love him a bit, he always plagues me so much."
"O, Hepsa, don't say so; pray don't!" cried Genevieve, shocked at Hepsa's passion. "If he is your brother, you ought to love him, you know."
"I don't know any such thing, I tell you! You may love him yourself if you want to; but I guess, when he kicks you, and beats you, and steals your things, and knocks your mud-houses down, you won't love him. I'd like to know why I've got to love him?" Hepsa demanded this of Genevieve in a very fierce manner.
"Because he is your brother I suppose, and because he ought to be good; and perhaps he plagues you because you don't love him," answered Genevieve, somewhat perplexed how she should answer the question, thinking in her own heart Hepsa had a very wicked brother. "At any rate," she continued, "God gave him to you; and I have read how he tells us all to love each other."
"I never did," replied Hepsa; "and if God
gave Tom to me, I wish he'd take him back, for I don't want him."