The children rushed forward breathlessly. Dolly could not believe that she had hurt it, scarcely that she had hit it.
But alas! yes. It was quite dead.
Hector held it in his hand. The bright eyes were already glazed—the feathers limp and dull.
And oh, worse and worse, it was a wren. A little innocent, harmless wren.
Dolly's sobs were bitter.
"I'll never touch a catapult again," she said. "A nasty horrid cruel thing it is. And I didn't really mean to hit the poor wren."
"It was only a fluke, then," said Hector, who, in spite of his sorrow for the wren, had felt some admiration for his sister's skill.
"N—no, not that," she said. "I did aim, but I never thought I'd hit it. Still, Hector, it shows you I can hit, you see;" and the thought made her leave off crying for a moment or two. But the sight of the poor little wren changed her triumph into sorrow again.
"I've done with shooting," she said, as she threw the unlucky catapult away.
And then she covered up the dead wren in her handkerchief and went in to tell her troubles to "mamma."