And Cicely had told him he mustn't go in a swimmin'. But he went; and because it made his mother feel bad, he would deceive her jest as good-natured as you ever see.
Why, once he come in with his pretty brown curls all wet, and his little shirt on wrong side out.
He was kinder whistlin', and tryin' to act indifferent and innocent. And when his mother questioned him about it, he said,—
“He had drinked so much water, that it had soaked through somehow to his hair. And he turned his shirt gettin' over the fence. And we might ask Let Peedick if it wuzn't so.”
We could hear Letty a whistlin' out to the barn, and we knew he stood ready to say “he see the shirt turn.”
But we didn't ask.
But when the boy see that his actin' and behavin' made his mother feel real bad, he would ask her forgiveness jest as sweet; and I knew he meant to do jest right, and mebby he would for as much as an hour, or till some temptation come along—or boy.
But the good-tempered easiness to be led astray made Cicely feel like death: she had seen it in another; she see it was a inherited trait. And she could see jest how hard it was goin' to make his future: she would try her best to break him of it. But how, how was she goin' to do it, with them weak, good-natured lips, and that chin?