Alice, Dicky, and Noel began to cry at about this time.
‘But you are not the wickedest children in the world by any means.’
Then he stood up and straightened his collar, and put his hands in his pockets.
‘You’re very unhappy now,’ he said, ‘and you deserve to be. But I will say one thing to you.’
Then he said a thing which Oswald at least will never forget (though but little he deserved it, with the obstruction in his pocket, unowned up to all the time).
He said, ‘I have known you all for four years—and you know as well as I do how many scrapes I’ve seen you in and out of—but I’ve never known one of you tell a lie, and I’ve never known one of you do a mean or dishonourable action. And when you have done wrong you are always sorry. Now this is something to stand firm on. You’ll learn to be good in the other ways some day.’
He took his hands out of his pockets, and his face looked different, so that three of the four guilty creatures knew he was no longer adamant, and they threw themselves into his arms. Dora, Denny, Daisy, and H. O., of course, were not in it, and I think they thanked their stars.
Oswald did not embrace Albert’s uncle. He stood there and made up his mind he would go for a soldier. He gave the wet ball one last squeeze, and took his hand out of his pocket, and said a few words before going to enlist. He said—
‘The others may deserve what you say. I hope they do, I’m sure. But I don’t, because it was my rotten cricket ball that stopped up the pipe and caused the midnight flood in our bedroom. And I knew it quite early this morning. And I didn’t own up.’
Oswald stood there covered with shame, and he could feel the hateful cricket ball heavy and cold against the top of his leg, through the pocket.