"I must go, Miss Baggerley," she said. "Will you be so kind as to see that Chris stays in the corner for a quarter of an hour? Only for a quarter of an hour, if he is good; but I know that he will be good, for he does not want to make his Granny unhappy any more. I am sure of that." With which gentle persuasion she went.
For a time Chris wept loudly and sorely, after which he was silent, save for an occasional sniff. This silence continued uninterrupted for so long that it at last aroused my suspicions. Turning my head the better to see him, I found that he was engaged in drawing strange and mystic signs upon the wall, by the simple process of wetting his finger in his mouth.
Hence the explanation of this sudden calm; for so absorbing, apparently, was this occupation, that it had had the effect of drying up all those bitter tears which, but a few minutes earlier, had flowed so freely.
"What are you doing?" I asked. "You must not dirty the wall like that."
"I am writing my name," the little beggar said with much pathos. "Chris-to-pher God-frey Wyndham. Then when I'm dead and gone far away over the sea, Granny will see it, and she'll be sorry she was so cross."
"Jane will wash out those dirty marks," I replied, ruthlessly destroying his mournful hopes. "They will not remain there."
At this the little beggar desisted from disfiguring the wall, but reiterated, though more weakly, "Granny will be very sorry by and by; she was cross, and she'll wish she hadn't put me in the corner."
"No, she won't," I answered decisively; "she'll be sorry that you were naughty, but she won't wish that she had not punished you. You deserved to be punished."
Feeling that I did not regard him as the ill-used little being that he considered himself, and that there was a want of sympathy about my remarks that was not altogether to his taste, Chris once more was silent.
Ten minutes elapsed, broken only by an occasional sigh from the occupant of the corner. Then I was asked wearily: