On a green spray a little way ahead a bird was singing full-throated and joyous, but to Tommy its music was mockery.
He took a long aim and brought the little songster, warm and quivering, on to the pathway in front of them.
As they came to it he kicked it aside, but Madge, stooping, lifted it from the long grass and hid it, quite dead, in her frock.
The tears had risen to her eyes, and she was on the point of challenging this seemingly wanton cruelty.
But there was something in Tommy's face that her eyes were quick to notice, and she was silent.
Thus is tact so largely a matter of instinct.
And, in a minute, Tommy turned to her.
"I—I should jolly well like to—to kill that chap," he said.
Madge said nothing, fondling the warm little body that she held beneath her pinafore.