Dolly felt penitent at once, for she was a kind little girl, and Hector's gentleness touched her.
"Well, I won't, then," she answered, "if you'll teach me how to catapult."
Hector did his best, both that day and several others. But I must say I have my doubts as to whether catapults are meant for little girls. Dolly tried over and over and over again, but she never could manage to hit anything she aimed at. And at last her patience seemed exhausted.
"I'm tired of it," she said. "I'll give it to Bobby. I shan't try to catapult any more."
And it would have been rather a good thing if she had kept to this resolution.
But the next day when she was out in the garden with her brothers, admiring Hector's good aim and the wonderful way in which he hit a little bell which he had hung high up on the branch of a tree as a sort of target, it came over her that she would try once again.
"Look at that bird, up on the top of the kitchen-garden wall," she said. "I'll have a go at it."
Hector laughed.
"I think the bird's quite safe," he said.
Dolly thought so too. She did not want to hurt the bird, she was really speaking in fun. But all the same she aimed at it, and—oh, sad and strange to say—she hit it! a quiver of the little wings, and the tiny head dropped, and then—in a moment it had fallen to the foot of the high wall on which it had perched so happily a moment before!