The Giant's Robe

by F. Anstey

'N—no,' said Dolly; 'Harold, don't tease me—don't tell me what isn't true ... it—it frightens me so!'

'My dear child, what can I tell you? Surely you know that what you did was stealing?'

'Stealing!' echoed Dolly, with great surprised eyes. 'Oh, no, Harold—not stealing. Why, of course I shall tell Mabel, and ask her for the stamp afterwards—only if I hadn't torn it off first, she might throw it away before I could ask, you know!'

'I'm afraid it was stealing all the same,' said Caffyn, affecting a sorrowfully compassionate tone; 'nothing can alter that now, Dolly.'

'Mabel won't be angry with me for that, I know,' said Dolly; 'she will see how it was really.'

'If it was only Mabel,' said Caffyn, 'we should have no reason to fear; but Mabel can't do anything for you, poor Dolly! It's the law that punishes these things. You know what law is?—the police, and the judges.'

The piteous change in the child's face, the dark eyes brimming with rising tears, and the little mouth drawn and trembling, might have touched some men; indeed, even Caffyn felt a languid compunction for what he was doing. But his only chance lay in working upon her fears; he could not afford to be sentimental just then, and so he went on, carefully calculating each word.

'Oh, I won't believe it,' cried Dolly, with a last despairing effort to resist the effect his grave pity was producing; 'I can't. Harold, you're trying to frighten me. I'm not frightened a bit. Say you are only in fun!'

But Caffyn turned away in well-feigned distress. 'Do I look as if it was fun, Dolly?' he asked, with an effective quiver in his low voice; he had never acted so well as this before. 'Is that this morning's paper over there?' he asked, with a sudden recollection, as he saw the sheet on a little round wicker table. 'Fetch it, Dolly, will you?'

'I must manage the obstinate little witch somehow,' he thought impatiently, and turned to the police reports, where he remembered that morning to have read the case of an unhappy postman who had stolen stamps from the letters entrusted to him.