“I’m sorry there’s no moon, as I promised you,” he said; “she won’t come up for my calling. I should have liked you to see where you were going. But if you ain’t an honest boy after this, you shall have another chance; and next time we will wait for the moon!”
With that he lifted Tommy’s legs, holding him by the ankles, and would have shoved his body over the edge of the butt into the water. But Tommy clung fast to his knees.
“Leave go, Tommy,” he said, “or I’ll tumble you right in.”
Tommy yielded, his will overcome by a greater fear. Clare let him hang for a moment over the black water, and slowly lowered him. Tommy clung to the side of the butt. Clare let go one leg, and taking hold of his hands pulled them away. Tommy’s terror would have burst in a frenzied yell, but the same instant he was down to the neck in the water, and lifted out again. He spluttered and gurgled and tried to scream.
“Now, Tommy,” said Clare, “don’t scream, or I’ll put you in again.”
But Tommy never believed anything except upon compulsion. The moment he could, that moment he screamed, and that moment he was in the water again. The next time he was taken out, he did not scream. Clare laid him on the wall, and he lay still, pretending to be drowned. Clare got up, set him on his feet in front of him, and holding him by the collar, trotted him round the top of the wall to the door, and dropped him into the garden. He was quiet enough now—more than subdued—incapable even of meditating revenge. But when they entered the nursery, the dog, taking Tommy for a worse sort of rat, made a leap at him right off the bed, as if he would swallow him alive, and the start and the terror of it brought him quite to himself again.
“Quiet, Abdiel!” said Clare.
The dog turned, jumped up on the bed, and lay down again close to the baby.
Clare, who, I have said, was in old days a reader of Paradise Lost, had already given him the name of Abdiel.
“Please, I couldn’t help yelling!” said Tommy, very meekly. “I didn’t know you’d got him!”