"Ain't Dick come home yet?" she asked, throwing herself on the floor.
"They ain't done the net yet. Tom came to fetch you a little while ago."
"I don't want Tom, I want Dick. We're going to make some letters, and learn to read," said Tiny.
"You'd better leave the reading alone, if it makes you so cross," said Mrs. Coomber.
"No, it don't make me cross; it's that nasty net."
"But you always liked to help daddy wind the string and mend the net before. Why don't you go to them now?"
But Tiny would not move. She lay on the floor, kicking and grumbling, because Dick could not leave the net and come and see her picture.
"You're a very naughty girl, Tiny," said Mrs. Coomber at last; "and I don't see how you can think God will love you if you don't try to be good."
The little girl sat up instantly, and looked earnestly into her face. "My other mammy used to say something like that," she said, slowly. And then she burst into tears, and ran and shut herself in the boys' bedroom.
What passed there, Mrs. Coomber did not know; but, half an hour afterwards, as she glanced out of the little kitchen window, she saw her running across the sands to where the group of boys sat mending the old net; and she smiled as she thought of what her words had done. She did not know what a hard fight Tiny had had with herself before she could make up her mind to give up her own way; she only thought how pleased her husband would be when he saw the child come running towards him, and that a fit of ill-humour, from which they would probably all have suffered, had been warded off by the little girl's conquest of herself.