“But I deserve to be punished,” interrupted Lesley. “I didn’t watch Ronnie, like Mother always says, and I’m older than he is and ought to remember.”
The boy’s face flushed at his sister’s generous words. “Then I’ll let Lesley take Jenny Lind to water for a whole week,” he cried, “though you always said”—this with a catch in the breath—“that it was a man’s place.”
“So it is,” said his father, affectionately, “and now you talk like a man.”
“And I’ll give up my pudding for a week, and maybe I’d better go to bed now and then I shan’t hear you read the next chapter of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ to-night.” And here the small sufferer really began to sniff, and made his way blindly to the staircase, still with the murre’s egg tightly clasped in his grimy paw.
“Oh, Father, oh, Mother!” sobbed Lesley. “He won’t have to go to bed, will he, poor Ronnie?”
“‘Poor Ronnie’ will have to learn to look before he leaps,” said his father, quietly. “Going to bed never hurt anybody, yet.” And though Margaret McLean’s own eyes were moist she nodded her head in silent agreement.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE FOG
“Green-y blue, blue-y green,
Best-est fire that ever was seen!”
chanted Ronald in the Lighthouse sitting-room one foggy evening in the late summer.