Oswald Bastable and Others

by E. Nesbit

'Why, you miserable little idiot, you've not been dreaming at all! You've been lying like a silly log, and letting that beastly bird carry off my prize essay! That's all! And it took me ten days to do, and I had to get almost all of it out of books, and the worse swat I ever did in my life. And now it's all no good. And there aren't any books down here to do it again out of. Oh, bother, bother, BOTHER!'

'I'm very sorry for you,' said Harold, 'but I didn't lie like logs—I did dream—and I've got the kite-paper, and I'll help you write the essay again if you like.'

'I shouldn't be surprised if it was all a make-up,' said William. (I must go on calling him William at present.) 'You've hidden the essay so as to be able to send it in yourself.'

'Oh, how can you?' said Harold; and he turned pale just like a girl, and just like a girl he began to cry.

'Now, look here,' the enraged William went on, 'I've got to be civil to you before people; but don't you dare to speak to me when we're alone. You're either a silly idiot or a sneaking hound, and either way I'm not going to have anything to do with you.'

I don't know how he could have done it, but William kept his word, and for three days he only spoke to Harold when other people were about. This was horrible for Harold; he had been used to being his father's pride and his mother's joy, and now he was Nobody's Anything, which is the saddest thing in the world to be. He tried to console himself by making kites all day long, but even kites cannot comfort you when nobody loves you, and when you feel that it really is not your fault at all.

William went about his own affairs; he was not at all happy. He finished his kite and flew it, and he lost it because the string caught on the church weather-cock, which cut it in two. And he tried to rewrite his prize essay, but he couldn't, because he had taken all the stuffing for it out of books and not out of his head, where it ought to have been.

Harold found some moments of forgetfulness when he was making the patent kite. It was very big, and the roll of paper he had found in his dream in the chimney was exactly the right thing for patent kite-making. But when it was done, what was the good? There was no one to see him fly it. He did fly it, and it was perfect. It was shaped like a bird, and it rose up, and up, and up, and hung poised above the church-tower, light and steady as a hawk poised above its prey. William wouldn't even come out to look at it, though Harold begged him to.

The next morning Harold dreamed that he had not been able to bear things any longer, and had run away, and when William woke up Harold was gone. Then William remembered how Harold had offered to help him with his kite, and would have helped him to rewrite the essay, and how through those three cruel days Harold had again and again tried to make friends, and how, after all, he was with his own people, and Harold was a stranger.

He said, 'Oh, bother, I wish I hadn't!' and he felt that he had been a beast. This is called Remorse. Then he said, 'I'll find him, and I'll be as decent to him as I can, poor chap! though he is silly.' This is called Repentance.