Mrs. Batholommey, too, was making quite awful and wholly incomprehensible faces at him. Under the triple menace the boy wilted. Like every child, since Cain, he had a thousand times been reproved for things he had said or done in perfect innocence. In fact, the more unconscious the offence, the more dire was the reproof. Children do not reason in such matters. It is enough for them to know they have said or done the wrong thing; without stopping to discover why or how that thing chanced to be wrong.
The non-linguist traveller in a foreign land cannot read the "Keep off the Grass" or "No Thoroughfare" signs. But the policeman's threatening club has a universal language that he understands and intuitively obeys. So Willem (ignorant of death save as an empty name that vaguely carried a note of sorrow, and wholly unaware why he should not have imparted the news of Grimm's coming demise), saw he had said something very terrible. And a look of abject panic came into his face.
But Grimm's hand was still on his head,—gentle, caressing, infinitely tender in its touch.
"No, don't stop the boy," commanded Peter, meeting the variously anguished glances of the others with a half smile that began and ended in the suddenly widened eyes. "Don't stop him. Only children speak the truth nowadays. It used to be 'children and fools.' But fools have learned to tell fool-lies, and they have left children the monopoly of truth telling. Go on, Willem. You heard the doctor say that I am going to——?"
Willem's fragile little body was trembling from head to foot. Under Mrs. Batholommey's distorted glare and threatening noiseless mouthings his puny courage had gone to pieces. Big tears began to roll down his cheeks. And noting the child's terror, Grimm fell to soothing him.
"There, there, jounker," comforted Peter. "Don't let them frighten you. Oom Peter will stand by you. You haven't done anything wrong and nobody's going to scold you. Don't be scared."
Under the strangely gentle voice and the consoling touch of the rough, kindly hand, Willem's fears subsided. With Oom Peter on his side, he could brave the frowns of all Grimm Manor if need be. For who was so strong, so wise as Oom Peter?
Did not every one bend to his orders and come running to him for advice and aid, as troubled children seek out a loving father? The boy ceased to tremble. He looked up into Grimm's face for something that should confirm the words and the touch.
And he found it. The rugged old visage had never before been so kindly, so unruffled. And in the little eyes that could flash so obstinately and irritably, there was nothing but friendliness.
Yes—something more that the boy had never before seen. Something he could not read, but that seemed to draw him strangely close to the old man, and freed him of his last vestige of fear.