Granny's heart softened. "I don't believe you did, my Chris," she remarked gently.
Chris put his arms round her neck and hid his face on her shoulder. "I'm very sorry," he mumbled. Then raising his head:
"I am going to be a very fair boy," he said magnanimously, touched by Granny's forgiveness; "I'm going to be a very fair boy, and I am going to tell you that I don't know the lady's part as well as I know the gentleman's part. Shall I be Sue, my Granny?"
"Yes. Now that's an excellent idea," she said, with much satisfaction, and glancing at me with a look of pride in her darling's noble repentance. "I consider that an excellent idea, indeed; and I am very pleased that you should have proposed it."
Chris's face fell. "Don't you think that it is silly for a big boy like me to be Sue?" he asked, with evident disappointment that his offer had been accepted.
"Not at all," Granny said. "It's only in a book, you see, my pet."
"I don't like being a girl," he murmured. "I don't want to be Sue."
"I thought, though, that you wanted to show Granny you were sorry for not having told her you were reading an old lesson," I remarked.
He sighed, without answering me; then after a pause, continued with an effort and a hesitation that offered a striking contrast to the glib manner of his previous reading:
"'She. Yes; for why did she hit me? She is a big and bad old cow. See her! See how fat she is! She is as fat as a sow. She has a fat hip, and a fat rib, and a fat ear, and a fat leg, and a fat all.'"