The Island of Faith | Page 7

also put a tremor into her voice, "why were you deliberately hurting this kitten? Don't you know that kittens can feel pain just as much as you can feel pain? Don't you know that it is wicked to make anything suffer? Why were you so wicked?"
The boy looked up at her with sullen, dark eyes. The grim twist at one corner of his mouth became more pronounced.
"Aw," he said gruffly, "why don't yer mind yer own business?"
If Rose-Marie's hands had been free, she would have taken the boy suddenly and firmly by both shoulders. She felt an overwhelming desire to shake him--to shake him until his teeth chattered. But both of her hands were busy, soothing the gray kitten that shivered against her breast.
"I am minding my own business," she told the boy. "It's my business to give help where it's needed, and this kitten," she cuddled it closer, "certainly needed help! Haven't you ever been told that you should be kind? Like," she faltered, "like Jesus was kind? He wouldn't have hurt anything. He loved animals--and He loved boys, too. Why don't you try to be the sort of a boy He could love? Why do you try to be bad--to do wrong things?"
The eyes of the child were even more sullen--the twist of his mouth was even more grim as he listened to Rose-Marie. But when she had finished speaking, he answered her--and still he did not try to run away.
"Wot," he questioned, almost in the words of the Young Doctor, "wot do you know about things that's right an' things that's wrong? It ain't bad t' hurt animals--not if they're little enough so as they ain't able t' hurt you!"
Rose-Marie sat down, very suddenly, upon the bench. In all of her life--her sheltered, glad life--she had never heard such a brutal creed spoken, and from the lips of a child! Her eyes, searching his face, saw that he was not trying to be funny, or saucy, or smart. Curiously enough she noted that he was quite sincere--that, to him, the torturing of a kitten was only a part of the day with its various struggles and amusements. When she spoke again her tone was gentle--as gentle as the tone with which the other slum children, who came to the Settlement House, were familiar.
"Whoever told you," she questioned, "that it's not wrong to hurt an animal, so long as it can't fight back?"
The boy eyed her strangely. Rose-Marie could almost detect a gleam of latent interest in his dark eyes. And then, as if he had gained a sort of confidence in her, he answered.
"Nobody never told me," he said gruffly. "But I know."
The kitten against Rose-Marie's breast cried piteously. Perhaps it was the hopelessness of the cry that made her want so desperately to make the boy understand. Conquering the loathing she had felt toward him she managed the ghost of a smile.
"I wish," she said, and the smile became firmer, brighter, as she said it, "I wish that you'd sit down, here, beside me. I want to tell you about the animals that I've had for pets--and about how they loved me. I had a white dog once; his name was Dick. He used to go to the store for me, he used to carry my bundles home in his mouth--and he did tricks--"
The boy had seated himself, gingerly, on the bench. He interrupted her, and his voice was eager.
"Did yer have t' beat him," he questioned, "t' make him do the tricks? Did he bleed when yer beat him?"
Again Rose-Marie gasped. She leaned forward until her face was on a level with the boy's face.
"Why," she asked him, "do you think that the only way to teach an animal is to teach him by cruelty? I taught my dog tricks by being kind and sweet to him. Why do you talk of beatings--I couldn't hurt anything, even if I disliked it, until it _bled_!"
The small boy drew back from Rose-Marie. His expression was vaguely puzzled--it seemed almost as if he did not comprehend what her words meant.
"My pa beats me," he said suddenly, "always he beats me--when he's drunk! An' sometimes he beats me when he ain't. He beats Ma, too, an' he uster beat Jim, 'n' Ella. He don't dare beat Jim now, though"--this proudly--"Jim's as big as he is now, an' Ella--nobody'd dast lay a hand on Ella ..." almost as suddenly as he had started to talk, the boy stopped.
For the moment the episode of the kitten was a forgotten thing. There was only pity, only a blank sort of horror, on Rose-Marie's face.
"Doesn't your father love you--any of you?" she asked.
"Naw." The boy's mouth was a straight line--a straight and very bitter line, for such a young mouth. "Naw, he only