This strong friendship would have cost Jack Smalley some envious pangs, perhaps, if the awful terror of that January afternoon had not made him afraid of the evil in his own soul.
MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION.
I have a confession to make. When I went home from my grandmother's,—being set down at the home-door by the stage-driver, in whose care I had been placed,—and found my little sister in my mother's arms, a quick growing hate of her struck its black roots in my heart. I know that this seems unnatural. In most houses the baby is the very light and joy of them,—the little idol to whom, from the least to the greatest, the whole family do willing homage.
But remember that I had grown to be ten years old, with no rival near the throne, accustomed to be the first object with my father and mother, petted, indulged, as much "the baby" as if I had worn white long clothes. It was not strange that it should come hard to be deposed from my throne of babyhood in one moment.
When I went into the house, Nurse Sikes met me with a smile which struck me like a blow.
"Somebody's got her nose broke, I guess," she said, with a tantalizing laugh.