he good lands! What's that!" excitedly cried frightened Aunt Deborah.
Aunt Deborah might well exclaim in surprise. For as she sat knitting quietly and humming a quaint old tune of long ago, one she had learned as a child——C-r-rash! bang! came a stone into the room, shivering the window-pane, just missing the swinging lamp in the hallway, making an ugly scar on the cabinet, and breaking into fragments a handsome vase. Then, as if satisfied with the mischief it had done, it rolled lazily across the floor, and finally stopped under the table, an inert, jagged bit of granite.
Aunt Deborah, as the stone pursued its reckless course, placed her hands over her head, and shrank back into her chair, a frightened and unwilling witness to the destruction of her property. It was quite distressing.
Besides the nervous shock, there was the broken window; there was the cabinet showing a great white dent that could not easily be removed; and there, too, was the vase she had kept so many long years, lying shattered and ruined before her eyes.
Aunt Deborah was one of the best and most kind-hearted of women; but—she was human, and the sudden havoc wrought by the missile exasperated as well as frightened her. She rushed to the window and opened it in time to see three or four boys scampering down the street as fast as their legs could carry them.
"Oh, you young scapegraces!" she cried. "If I could once lay hold on you, wouldn't I teach you a lesson!"
But the boys never stopped until they had disappeared around a friendly corner. Aunt Deborah was so overcome by the accident, and so intent upon watching the retreating boys to whom she desired to teach a lesson, that she did not at first notice a barefooted lad standing under the window on the pavement below, holding a battered old hat in his hand, and looking up at her with a scared face and tearful eyes.
"Please, Miss," said the boy tremulously.
"Oh! Who are you? Who threw that stone at my window?" called out Aunt Deborah, as she spied him.
"Please, Miss," pleaded the boy, fumbling nervously his torn hat, "I threw it, but I didn't mean to do it."