“THERE!” said Davie Campbell, flinging as he spoke a large, sharp-pointed stick right where his brother stood, “take that; I don’t care if it does hurt you. I hate you, George Campbell!”
The stick was aimed even more surely than Davie in his blind rage imagined. It struck his brother’s side face, making an ugly wound, from which the blood flowed freely.
SHE HELD UP A WARNING HAND.
“Ah, ha!” said George, as he turned to the pump and began to bathe the wound, “look what you have done now. What will mother say to you, young man? And as for me, that will make a scar, and I will wear it all my life to remember you by. You will like that, won’t you? You will just enjoy having people ask me where I got that scar, and me having to tell that my beloved brother did it on purpose, because he hated me. Oh, ho! you are a jewel, you are,” and George Campbell laughed, and dodged just in time to escape a stone from his angry brother’s hand; then went off down the street, leaving Davie in a perfect rage.
He was three years younger than his brother, and was said by the neighbors to have a great deal worse disposition than George, but I never felt sure of that. However, it is quite true that instead of being master of his temper he let it master him. He had, also, a wretched habit of throwing anything he might happen to have in his hand when the angry fit seized him, letting it strike wherever it might. In this way he had narrowly escaped doing serious mischief, and he had promised himself hundreds of times that he would never, never throw things again, and yet, as soon as he grew angry, so settled was that habit upon him, that the stick or stone was apt to fly through the air. As for George, I think he was quite as easily angered as his brother, but his habit was to laugh, or sneer, or say the most taunting words imaginable, with a sort of superior smile on his face the while. On the whole, I am not sure that George appeared any better in the sight of Him who can read hearts than did his brother Davie.
They were not the worst boys in the world, by any means; they did not quarrel all the time. For days together they would succeed in being very friendly, and in having good times, but it must be confessed that George had discovered certain directions in which his young brother could be easily teased, and that he delighted to tease him.
“Davie is such a little spitfire,” he used to say to his Aunt Mary, when she argued with him about the sin of such a habit. “Why does he want to go off like a pop gun the first word that is said to him? I never do.”
“No,” said Aunt Mary; “you laugh—a laugh which makes him feel more angry than he did before, and you say something to increase his rage. Is that really being any better than he?” But these questions George did not like to answer.