For the space of a moment or so, Mrs Desmond stared at the boy as if she could not believe her ears; then she caught hold of him and half smothered him with kisses.
“Bless you, you dear little chap, you shall not leave him; you shall bring him along and we’ll all enjoy ourselves together. What’s his name?—Bertie Fellowes. Bertie, my man, you are not very old yet, so I’m going to teach you a lesson as well as ever I can—it is that kindness is never wasted in this world. I’ll go out now and telegraph to your Mother—I don’t suppose she will refuse to let you come with us.”
A couple of hours later she returned in triumph, waving a telegram to the two excited boys.
“God bless you, yes, with all our hearts,” it ran; “you have taken a load off our minds.”
And so Bertie Fellowes and Shivers found that there was such a thing as a fairy after all.
Chapter Twelve.
Haggart’s Lie, by Geraldine Glasgow.
Crawley Major was talking very impressively in the great class-room of Felton College. Even the few slow boys who were still mumbling over their Latin grammar for next day had one ear pricked up to hear what he was saying. “I’ll tell you what it is,” said Crawley Major, addressing them generally: “the Doctor is in a furious wax, and he will be pretty free with his canings and impositions to-morrow. I just happened to be taking a message to Barclay, when he comes fussing in, not seeing me, and just swells up to Barclay, purple with rage. ‘Somebody has had the boat out on the river again, Mr Barclay,’ he says, ‘notwithstanding my orders and all the fines and punishments I have imposed, and I’m determined to find out who it is.’ Then he saw me and turned purple again. ‘Now, Crawley, you have heard what I said, and you can just return to the class-room and tell your companions that I shall come down in half an hour, and I intend to have the truth about that boat if I have to keep every boy in the school under punishment for the next month;’ so here I am.”