"You've done a good few now, Henry!"
"Five, father."
"Ay, I have the lot there on that ledge so's I can take them down easily an' look at them. I feel proud of you, son ... proud of you!"
He began to remind Henry of things that had happened when he was a boy. His mind became flooded with memories. "Do you mind Bridget Fallon?" he would say, and then he would recall many incidents that were connected with her. "Do you mind the way you wanted to go to Cambridge, an' I wouldn't let you," and "Do you mind the time you took the woollen balls from Mr. Maginn's house?...."
Henry remembered. Mr. Maginn, the vicar of Ballymartin, had invited Henry to spend the afternoon with his nephew and niece and some other children. They had played a game with balls made of coloured wool, and while they were playing, Henry, liking the pattern of one of them, had put it into his pocket. It had been missed, and there had been a search for it, in which Henry had joined. He was miserable, and he wanted to confess that he had the ball, but every time he opened his lips to say that he had it, he felt afraid, and so he had refrained from speaking. He felt, too, that every one knew that he had taken it, but still he could not confess that he had it, and when they said, "Isn't it queer? I wonder where it's gone!" he had answered, "Yes, isn't it queer?" They had abandoned the search, and had played another game, but all the pleasure of the party was lost for Henry. He kept saying to himself, "You've got it. You've got it!..."
He had hurried home after the party was over, and when he reached the shrubbery, he dug a hole and buried the ball in it. He had closed his eyes as he took it out of his pocket, so that he should not see the bright colours of it, and had heaped the earth on to it as if he could not conceal it quickly enough ... but burying it had not quieted his mind. He felt, whenever he met Mr. Maginn, that the vicar looked at him as if he were saying to himself, "You stole the woollen ball!...." At the end of the month, he had gone to his father and told him of it, and Mr. Quinn had cocked his eye at him for a moment and considered the subject.
"If I were you, Henry," he had said, "I'd dig up that ball and take it back to Mr. Maginn and just tell him about it!"
Henry could remember how hard it had been to do that, how he had loitered outside the gates of the vicarage for an hour, trying to force himself to go up to the door and ask for the vicar ... and how kind Mr. Maginn had been when, at last, he had made his confession!
"You were a funny wee lad, Henry," Mr. Quinn said, taking his son's hand in his. "Always imaginin' things!" He thought for a second or two. "I suppose," he went on, "that's what makes you able to write books ... imaginin' things! Ay, that's it!"