"Like fun it does," retorted Jack scornfully. "Worms haven't any feelings, hardly."
"Well fishes have and if you haven't any worms you can't catch fishes," stormed Sarah. "I will too throw away your worms."
"You will not!" flashed Jack, taking a step toward her.
Sarah, the defiant, turned and fled toward her brother. He put his arm about her and found that she was shaking with nervous sobbing.
"I'll see you to-morrow, Jack," he said quietly. "There is no use in rousing the whole neighborhood. Come on, Sarah, we're going home."
He lifted the little girl in his arms and strode across the grass, entering the door of the house noiselessly and depositing her in a large arm chair in the office. Then he went into the kitchen, warmed a glass of milk and made her drink it.
"Now tell me all about it," he said, sitting down at his desk to face her. Sarah, he knew, had a horror of being "fussed over" and he did not dare pet her though he wished his mother were there to cuddle the pathetic little figure in her arms.
"I emptied the can every night, after Jack went to bed," said Sarah. "That's all. He doesn't care how much he hurts them, but I do."
"But how could you stay awake from eight till ten o'clock?" asked the doctor curiously, "and how could you come down stairs without waking Shirley or being seen by Aunt Trudy or Winnie?"
"I didn't go to bed, that is not really," confided Sarah. "I lay down with all my clothes on, because Rosemary always comes in to see that our light is out before she goes to bed. But after nine o'clock I stayed up till I saw Jack shut the kitchen door of his house and then I knew he was through digging worms."