"Your old playfellow has left us, daddy," said Ernest. "I am glad to say he died peacefully while you were at school. I think he only had a very little bit of his ninth and last life left, for he was fifteen years old and had suffered some harsh shocks."
"Dead?" asked Abel with a quivering mouth.
"And I think that we ought to give him a nice grave and put up a little stone to his memory."
Thus he tried to distract the boy from his loss.
"We will go at once," he said, "and choose a beautiful spot in the garden for his grave. You can take one of those pears and eat it while we search."
But Abel shook his head.
"Couldn't eat and him lying dead," he answered. He was crying.
They went through the French window from the study.
"Do you know any particular place that he liked?"
Slowly the child's sorrow lessened in the passing interest of finding the grave.